Generics in c# & accessing the static members of T

Question

My question concerns c# and how to access Static members ... Well I don't really know how to explain it (which kind of is bad for a question isn't it?) I will just give you some sample code:

Class test<T>{
     int method1(Obj Parameter1){
         //in here I want to do something which I would explain as
         T.TryParse(Parameter1);

         //my problem is that it does not work ... I get an error.
         //just to explain: if I declare test<int> (with type Integer)
         //I want my sample code to call int.TryParse(). If it were String
         //it should have been String.TryParse()
     }
}

So thank you guys for your answers (By the way the question is: how would I solve this problem without getting an error). This probably quite an easy question for you!

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Edit: Thank you all for your answers!

Though I think the try - catch phrase is the most elegant, I know from my experience with vb that it can really be a bummer. I used it once and it took about 30 minutes to run a program, which later on only took 2 minutes to compute just because I avoided try - catch.

This is why I chose the switch statement as the best answer. It makes the code more complicated but on the other hand I imagine it to be relatively fast and relatively easy to read. (Though I still think there should be a more elegant way ... maybe in the next language I learn)

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Though if you have some other suggestion I am still waiting (and willing to participate)

Answer 1

The problem is that TryParse isn't defined on an interface or base class anywhere, so you can't make an assumption that the type passed into your class will have that function. Unless you can contrain T in some way, you'll run into this a lot.

Constraints on Type Parameters