C# macro-style generics

I am looking for a way to have generics which only exist at compile time for the purpose of code reuse: not having to copy/paste classes and methods. Just text replacement basically, like macros, with some type checks. More like C++ templates.

Reason why I am asking:

Normal C# generics insist on always creating generic types at run-time (why??), which

1) not only creates unnecessary limitations (e.g. cannot inherit from a type parameter, which would be very useful),

2) but these run-time generic types are creating problems for me right now because .NET cannot serialize them, so when I insert them into a RichTextBox, many operations either fail or throw "Cannot serialize a generic type" exceptions. Everything was working with non-generic types but I wanted to make the code more general to add things s开发者_C百科o I added generics ( C# Generic Inheritance workaround), and they are breaking everything.

Thanks.

While C# doesn't have C++-style templates, you could try using T4 (the Text Template Transformation Toolkit) to mimic them.

Your file would look something like:

<#@ template language="C#" #>
<#@ output extension=".cs" #>
<#
    foreach (var T in new[]{"instantiate","for","these","types"})
    {
#>      

class FakeGeneric<#=T#>
{
    <#=T#> FakeGenericField;
}

<#  } #> 

This would generate the types like this:

class FakeGenericinstantiate
{
    instantiate FakeGenericField;
}

class FakeGenericfor
{
    for FakeGenericField;
}

// etc

There's a page on MSDN about using T4 to generate code like this.

They're called templates (not "macro-style generics") and they do not exist in C#.

Take a look at D if you're interested; it has a lot of template metaprogramming capabilities, more (and IMO better than) C++ or C#.