Question

Maybe I am just not reading the MSDN documentation correctly, but given a function that takes in one string parameter and returns type T, how can this be specifed as a shared function using Func()?

MSDN says Func(Of In T1, Out TResult), but all of their examples use the same data type, i.e., Func(Of String, String). I want to do Func(Of In String, Out T), where T is arbitrary (but I can constrain it if necessary by a base class). I want it shared/static at the class level, yet the encapsulating class will itself not be a generic class. It seems in this specific scenario, it’s impossible to do what I want because the compiler would have no way of knowing what Type T is at runtime.

So is it possible to do generics on delegates or anonymous lambda expressions in VB.net (not C#)?

Answer 1

It’s not clear exactly what you’re trying to do. You can certainly use generic delegate types within a generic method or type. As a trivial example:

public T Convert<T>(Func<string, T> converter, string text)
{
    return converter(text);
}

However, you can’t do this without T being a type parameter itself, specified either in the generic method or type.