Generating a new instance of a List in C#

Question

I have a problem with using C#, if I initialize a certain list, lets say List<T> exampleList using another pre-existing list, lets say toModify like this: List<T> exampleList = new List<T>(toModify). When I later modify toModify list the newly created list also modifies itself. If it passes the value by reference shouldn't the value of exampleList stay the same since it was generated from the other one?

TLDR: Value of a list I initialize using another list(second list) changes when I change the second list. I come from a Java background and can't understand why this happens. Will I always have to use clone?

Answer 1

Let us use this example :

        List<A> firstList = new List<A>()
        {
            new A() { Id = 3 },
            new A() { Id = 5 }
        };

        List<A> secondList = new List<A>(firstList);

        secondList[1].Id = 999;

        Console.WriteLine(firstList[1].Id);

Output : 999

The main reason for this is that even though we created a new List<T> that points to a new memory allocated on heap it still works with references the point to same objects.

To create a list that points to new (!) objects with the same values we'd need to clone these elements somehow, one way to do it is to use LINQ .Select() method in order to create new objects and then a ToList() method to copy the list itself:

        List<A> firstList = new List<A>()
        {
            new A() { Id = 3 },
            new A() { Id = 5 }
        };

        List<A> secondList = firstList.Select(el => new A() { Id = el.Id }).ToList();

        secondList[1].Id = 999;

        Console.WriteLine(firstList[1].Id);

Output : 5