Using Statement with Generics: using ISet<> = System.Collections.Generic.ISet<>

Question

Since I am using two different generic collection namespaces (System.Collections.Generic and Iesi.Collections.Generic), I have conflicts. In other parts of the project, I am using both the nunit and mstest framework, but qualify that when I call Assert I want to use the nunit version by

using Assert = NUnit.Framework.Assert; 

Which works great, but I want to do the same thing with generic types. However, the following lines do not work

using ISet = System.Collections.Generic.ISet; using ISet<> = System.Collections.Generic.ISet<>; 

Does anyone know how to tell .net how to use the using statement with generics?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, the using directive does not do what you want. You can say:

using Frob = System.String; 

and

using ListOfInts = System.Collections.Generic.List<System.Int32>; 

but you cannot say

using Blob<T> = System.Collections.Generic.List<T> 

or

using Blob = System.Collections.Generic.List 

It's a shortcoming of the language that has never been rectified.

Answer 2

I think you're better off aliasing the namespaces themselves as opposed to the generic types (which I don't think is possible).

So for instance:

using S = System.Collections.Generic; using I = Iesi.Collections.Generic; 

Then for a BCL ISet<int>, for example:

S.ISet<int> integers = new S.HashSet<int>();