Question

I have a struct with some fields. One of the fields is of a generic type. The generic type could be either a reference type or a value type.

I want to force that it is stored as a reference internally, to avoid that the struct gets too large.

struct Foo<T>
{
  T field; // should be a reference
}

I know I could use object or T[], but both is awkward. Isn’t there something like a generic Reference type?

struct Foo<T>
{
  Reference<T> field;
}

Yes, sure, I could write my own. But I’m trying to avoid that

Answer 1

If you’re trying to be absolutely sure any Value Type is boxed, store it in an object field and use a property to enforce the generic constraint; ie:

struct Example<T>
{
    private object obj;
    public T Obj
    {
        get
        {
            return (T)obj;
        }
        set
        {
            this.obj = value;
        }
    }
}