Ranged integers in .NET (or C#)

Question

Am I being blind, or does the .NET framework not provide any kind of ranged integer class? That is, a type that would prevent you setting a value outside some given bounds that are not the full range of the basic data type. For example, an integer type that would restrict its values to between 1 and 100. Showing my age here, but back in '93, I remember using that sort of thing in Modula-2 (eeek!), but I've not seen explicit framework / language support for it since.

Am I just missing something, or is it a case of "it's so simple to make your own that the framework doesn't bother"?

Cheers.

Answer 1

They're not baked in like Eiffel's design by contract, but you can roll your own. For C# 3.5 and earlier, there's Spec#.

For C# 4.0, they've introduced CodeContracts (but it seems to be in BCL extensions).

Answer 2

You’re not missing anything – unless enums fit your case¹⁾ – it doesn’t exist. Roll your own.

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¹⁾ And notice that enums actually don’t enforce a valid enum value because that would preclude of using enums for combined flags.