How to get the ref of a variable of a class in C#?

Question

How to get a reference of a variable in a class? I am trying to get a reference of a variable use it elsewhere and need the changes to be reflected in its habitat.

 public class PowerComINC
 {
     static int IMALF1_A = 0; //INSTRUCTOR MALF ID FOR MISC FUNCTION
     static int IMALF2_A = 0; //INSTRUCTOR MALF ID FOR MISC FUNCTION
     static int IMFIRE_A = 0; //INSTRUCTOR MALF ID FOR FIRE 

     public static ref int GetAssociatedGlobals(string variableName)
     {
         // return ref of variableName
     }
}

...

ref int val = ref PowerComINC.GetAssociatedGlobals("IMALF1_A");

val++;

Console.Writeln(PowerComINC.IMALF1_A); //Print 1

Answer 1

How do you do this? Like so:

ref int val = ref PowerComINC.GetAssociatedGlobals("IMALF1_A");
val++;
Console.WriteLine(PowerComINC.IMALF1_A);

Note the use of ref in both the variable declaration and in prefixing to the assignment. (you can also use ref var val = ..., i.e. the type will be implicitly determined, but the ref is still required).

Where your method is presumably implemented like such:

public class PowerComINC
 {
     internal static int IMALF1_A = 0; //INSTRUCTOR MALF ID FOR MISC FUNCTION
     internal static int IMALF2_A = 0; //INSTRUCTOR MALF ID FOR MISC FUNCTION
     internal static int IMFIRE_A = 0; //INSTRUCTOR MALF ID FOR FIRE 

     public static ref int GetAssociatedGlobals(string variableName)
     {
         switch (variableName)
         {
            case "IMALF1_A":
                return ref IMALF1_A;
            case "IMALF2_A":
                return ref IMALF2_A;
            case "IMFIRE_A":
                return ref IMFIRE_A;
         }
         throw new ArgumentException(nameof(variableName));
     }
}

However, as HimBromBeere states, there's little point in approaching this problem in this way. The performance degradation of the switch lookup will invariably outweigh any performance benefit of directly mutating a reference variable as small as an int, and now you have no encapsulation of your fields whatsoever.