Indexing classes with access modifiers...

So I am pretty sure that I have the term right, but I was writing some code for a Winforms application and came across some code that I was unfamiliar with, and it related to using [index] to index a class.

So the concept is this:
I have a class, say Customers() and the customer has a Name, phone number, and a customer id.  The phone number is unique, as well as the customer id.  I saw a bit of code like this:

customers[phonenumber]

and the phonenumber is a string.  I know that you can do it with a DataSet and it's tables, but I never thought that you could do it with a class (I have been away from OOP too long before the advent of C#).

So I looked at the class and found that you could override the functionality of the [] indexers.

So in essence I have this in my class:

public Customer this[int index]
{
    get { return (Customer)List[index]; }
}

public Customer this[string PhoneNumber]
{
    get
    {
         foreach(Customer m in List)
         {
               if(m.PhoneNumber == PhoneNumber)
               {
                       return m;
               }
         }
         return null;
    }
}

This gives me the ability to have a phone number and find the Customer based on that as an index instead of something that I made up to be a unique key.

The other key to this is that the Customers class inherited from the CollectcionBase class so that List was inherent and you had access to a Collection in which to use the indexers.

Have a happy day.