Question

I have a generic class, Class<T>, that implements IEnumerable<T>. T is also constrained to implement IConvertable.

I also want this class to be able to pretend to be a string-like object, so I want to implement IEnumerable<char>. However, IEnumerable<T> and IEnumerable<char> collide — what happens if T is char?

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to accomplish this?

EDIT: Here’s some clarification — I’d like to be able to do the following:

public IEnumerator<T> GetEnumerator()
{
    for (var i = _offset; i < _offset + _length; i++)
        yield return _array[i];
}

public IEnumerator<char> GetEnumerator()
{
    for (var i = _offset; i < _offset + _length; i++)
        yield return _array[i].ToChar(null);
}

Answer 1

You say that you need your class to “pretend to be a string-like object”. Can you make the string-like behaviour more explicit and avoid implementing IEnumerable<char> at all?

public IEnumerator<T> GetEnumerator()
{
    for (var i = _offset; i < _offset + _length; i++)
        yield return _array[i];
}

// either
public IEnumerator<char> GetCharEnumerator()
{
    for (var i = _offset; i < _offset + _length; i++)
        yield return _array[i].ToChar(null);
}

// or
public IEnumerable<char> AsCharSequence()
{
    for (var i = _offset; i < _offset + _length; i++)
        yield return _array[i].ToChar(null);
}