Do Arrays take up space even without values in them in .net?

I have a program in VB.net that uses a 3D array:

Private gridList(10, 900, 900) As GridElement

Now, I just used a Memory Profiler on it (because my application is having some major leak issues or something) and apparently, this array (containing at the moment of testing 0-30 elements at one time) is using 94% of the memory currently in use by my application. Even when it is empty it takes 开发者_开发技巧up huge amounts of memory.

My only assumption is that even empty arrays take up space! This puts a major blow into my plans!

My Question:

Is there any alternative to this that allows me to still have the same abilities to map i.g. I've been using it like this:

Dim cGE as GridElement = gridList(3, 5, 7)

but doesn't hog up so much memory for things that aren't using memory?

Thanks!

Do Arrays take up space even without values in them in .net?

No. But your array has values in it. And hence takes up space.

To avoid keeping a lot of elements in memory when you only access a few of all the possible elements, you need to use a so-called sparse array. In .NET, this is easiest implemented via a Dictionary, where the key in your case would be a three-element structure*, and the value would be a GridElement.

* If you’re using an up-to-date version of .NET, then you can model this via a Tuple(Of Integer, Integer, Integer)