Question

I have the following method:

virtual public int nonNeg(int? numIn)
    {
        if ((numIn < 0) || (numIn ==null))
        {
            return 0;
        }
        else return (int)numIn;

    }

I want to be able to have a single method which could take in either bytes, shorts, or ints to force these values to a nonnegative number. How could I accomplish this?

Answer 1

I would not normally suggest this, but off the top of my head the following overloads should cover most your cases. They will cover the nullable types and the non-nullable types, the compiler will select the appropriate overload.

public static T nonNeg<T>(T n) where T : struct, IComparable
{
  if (n.CompareTo(default(T)) <= 0)
  {
    return default(T);
  }
  return n;
}

public static T nonNeg<T>(T? n) where T : struct, IComparable 
{
  if (!n.HasValue || n.Value.CompareTo(default(T)) <= 0)
  {
    return default(T);
  }
  return n.Value;
}