A style question regarding multi-signature methods

Clive D Pottinger

Hello all. Now that I have discovered extension methods, I am revisiting my libraries of handy-dandy routines to see where it makes sense to convert them. In doing so I am also revisiting a question about how to handle methods that work on different data types. I am wondering if anyone out there has any opinions or knows any arguments for/against writing such methods in a particular style. I know there probably isn't any one "right" answer, but I thought it would be informative to hear what other programmers think. For instance, I have a lot of methods that work on strings. I also need the same operations to work on character arrays. So I might end up with something like

public int foo ( char[] SourceData ) { ... }
public int foo ( string SourceData ) { ... }

I have also handled this using

public int foo ( char[] SourceData ) { return foo(new string(SourceData)); }
public int foo ( string SourceData ) { ... }

and even

public int foo ( object SourceData ) 
{
  string source;
  if ( SourceData.GetType() == typeof(string) ) source = SourceData;
  else if ( SourceData.GetType() == typeof(char[]) ) source = new string(SourceData); 
  else error_condition;
  ...
}

I started to look at generics, but it seems that they may be a bit of overkill for routines that only handle 2 or 3 different data types. Opinions? Critisisms? Other ideas? All are welcome.

Clive Pottinger Victoria, BC

Pete OHanlon

cpotting wrote:

I started to look at generics, but it seems that they may be a bit of overkill for routines that only handle 2 or 3 different data types.

Why would generics be overkill. Just because you are limiting to only 2 or 3 data types, generics are still very useful. Let's face it, generics (in most cases) are often only used against a couple of types only. Don't limit yourself just because your code doesn't use every possible type.

Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.

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led mike

Pete O'Hanlon wrote:

Don't limit yourself

He may not be. ;)

led mike

Pete OHanlon

led mike wrote:

He may not be.

:laugh: Smooth. You've definitely mastered the one liner.

Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.

My blog | My articles

Clive D Pottinger

Thanks Pete. I will take a look a closer look at generics. I'm not quite sure what led mike meant by "He may not be", though.

Clive Pottinger Victoria, BC

led mike

Well I've had two years of learning from some of the best ;)

led mike