Question

Possible Duplicates:
Anyone know a good workaround for the lack of an enum generic constraint?
Create Generic method constraining T to an Enum

Is is possible to limit the generic type parameter [I don’t know if that’s the right name] to an Enum?

For example how do I do something like this?

//VB.NET
Function GetValues(Of T As System.Enum)(ByVal value As T) As IEnumerable(Of T)
    Return [Enum].GetValues(value.GetType)
End Function

//C#
public IEnumerable<T> GetValues<T>(T value) where T : System.Enum
{
    return Enum.GetValues(value.GetType());
}

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Update

I eventually used Jon Skeet’s Unconstrained Melody for that purpose. Thanks to you all for your contributions.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, you cannot – Microsoft closed this one out as a won’t fix item.

You can treat enums as structs and use that as the constraint instead (I think that was how Jon Skeet did it in Unconstrained Melody?) but that is kind of unsightly.