Change localScale.x in Unity without creating a new Vector3

Question

Is it possible to change localScale.x in Unity without creating a new Vector3?

Answer 1

Yes, simply write: localScale.x = 100.0 or whatever you'd like.

This doesn't work when the localScale you're referring to (which is not clear) is a property of some instance, because C# properties are just syntactic sugar for function invocations and you'd thus be changing a member of a local temporary, not the actual backing Vector3. In those cases you must replace the entire Vector3, as in foo.localScale = new Vector3(x, y, z);.

This may be a minor inconvenience in terms of typing, but since Vector3 is a value type there is no appreciable performance overhead (you're not creating garbage on the heap, for example, as you would if Vector3 was a reference type).