Question

I have a method like:

AverageAndDoSomeMath (Point2) 

and I wonder how to handle:

AverageAndDoSomeMath (Point2) // single AverageAndDoSomeMath (Point2 collection) // multiple 

using a single implementation preferably.

For collection, I plan to use the IEnumerable type so I can pass any kind of collection, but for a single value, I don’t want to wrap and pass it as a collection, because the collection itself serves no purpose, other than to satisfy the type.

How to best handle it in the clearest, fastest, most efficient way?

EDIT: Maybe I should have chosen a better method name, but the method calculates the average of all the points, for 1 value it doesn’t make sense, but think of it as that the value will be used to say calculate another value, but what’s important is finding the average, so I can’t call the 1st method.

Answer 1

I know you said you didn’t want to wrap it and pass it as a collection, but there are two ways you can do this with minimal hassle, so I’ll post them in case you weren’t aware of one.

You could use params on your method:

public void Average(params Point2[] points) 

after which you can call it with any number of arguments, or with an array:

Average(P1); Average(P2, P3, P4); Average(); // this one becomes an empty array in the method  Point[] array = new Point[] { P1, P2, P3, P4 }; Average(array); 

Or alternately, you can use short array syntax to wrap up your object:

Average({ P1 }); // this is legal C# for making an array with 1 element 

EDIT: After reading your note, I would suggest that a params array is the clearest way to do what you want. The only real downside to it is that you can’t pass in an IEnumerable<Point2> (or other collections like a List<Point2>) without first calling ToArray(), because it only takes actual arrays.