Arithmetic operator overloading for a generic class in C#

Given a generic class definition like

public class ConstrainedNumber<T> :
    IEquatable<ConstrainedNumber<T>>,
    IEquatable<T>,
    IComparable<ConstrainedNumber<T>>,
    IComparable<T>,
    IComparable where T:struct, IComparable, IComparable<T>, IEquatable<T>

How can I define arithmetic operators for it?

The following does not compile, because the '+' operator cannot be applied to types 'T' and 'T':

public static T operator +( ConstrainedNumber<T> x, ConstrainedNumber<T> y)
{
    return x._value + y._value;
}

The generic type 'T' is constrained with the 'where' keyword as you can see, but I need a constraint for number types that have arithmetic operators (IArithmetic?).

'T' will be a primitive number type such as int, float, etc. Is there a 'where' constraint for such types?

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1 Answer

I just did this after looking here. The Vector4<T> class contains 4 numbers/axis of type T with the usual vector math. Just add 2 implicit ops to convert to and from Decimal. This is probably as un-verbose as you're going to get, but as you point out, more precise and thus heavier than it needs to be. Like you guys, I wish there was an INumeric or something!


public static Vector4<T> operator +(Vector4<T> a, Vector4<T> b)
{
    Vector4<Decimal> A = a;
    Vector4<Decimal> B = b;

    var result = new Vector4<Decimal>(A.X + B.X, A.Y + B.Y, A.Z + B.Z, A.W + B.W);

    return result;
}

public static implicit operator Vector4<Decimal>(Vector4<T> v)
{
    return new Vector4<Decimal>(
        Convert.ToDecimal(v.X), 
        Convert.ToDecimal(v.Y), 
        Convert.ToDecimal(v.Z), 
        Convert.ToDecimal(v.W));
}

public static implicit operator Vector4<T>(Vector4<Decimal> v)
{
    return new Vector4<T>(
        (T)Convert.ChangeType(v.X, typeof(T)), 
        (T)Convert.ChangeType(v.Y, typeof(T)), 
        (T)Convert.ChangeType(v.Z, typeof(T)), 
        (T)Convert.ChangeType(v.W, typeof(T)));
}

answered 2010-04-19T12:52:55.307

Arithmetic operator overloading for a generic class in C#

1 Answer

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