Generics - where T is a number? [duplicate]

Question

I'm trying to figure a way to create a generic class for number types only, for doing some calculations.

Is there a common interface for all number types (int, double, float...) that I'm missing???

If not, what will be the best way to create such a class?

UPDATE:

The main thing I'm trying to achieve is checking who is the bigger between two variables of type T.

Answer 1

What version of .NET are you using? If you are using .NET 3.5, then I have a generic operators implementation in MiscUtil (free etc).

This has methods like T Add<T>(T x, T y), and other variants for arithmetic on different types (like DateTime + TimeSpan).

Additionally, this works for all the inbuilt, lifted and bespoke operators, and caches the delegate for performance.

Some additional background on why this is tricky is here.

You may also want to know that dynamic (4.0) sort-of solves this issue indirectly too - i.e.

dynamic x = ..., y = ... dynamic result = x + y; // does what you expect 

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Re the comment about < / > - you don't actually need operators for this; you just need:

T x = ..., T y = ... int c = Comparer<T>.Default.Compare(x,y); if(c < 0) {     // x < y } else if (c > 0) {      // x > y } 

Answer 2

There are interfaces for some of the operations on the number types, like the IComparable<T>, IConvertible and IEquatable<T> interfaces. You can specify that to get a specific functionality:

public class MaxFinder<T> where T : IComparable<T> {     public T FindMax(IEnumerable<T> items) {       T result = default(T);       bool first = true;       foreach (T item in items) {          if (first) {             result = item;             first = false;          } else {             if (item.CompareTo(result) > 0) {                result = item;             }          }       }       return result;    }  } 

You can use delegates to expand a class with type specific operations:

public class Adder<T> {     public delegate T AddDelegate(T item1, T item2);     public T AddAll(IEnumerable<T> items, AddDelegate add) {       T result = default(T);       foreach (T item in items) {          result = add(result, item);       }       return result;    }  } 

Usage:

Adder<int> adder = new Adder<int>(); int[] list = { 1, 2, 3 }; int sum = adder.AddAll(list, delegate(int x, int y) { return x + y; }); 

You can also store delegates in the class, and have different factory methods that sets up delegates for a specific data type. That way the type specific code is only in the factory methods.