Question

This is what I’ve got in a project including fairly complex cases of reflection:

static int PopulateValues<T>(List<string> propertyNames, ref T list) { /*...*/ }

// Example call:
PopulateValues(propertyNames, ref list1);

I’d really like to add params along and do params ref T[] lists to allow usage:

PopulateValues(propertyNames, ref list1, ref list2, ...);

However, this gives me the following error:

Parameter cannot have both ‘params’ and ‘ref’ modifiers.

My initial thought was letting list be an object[], but the usage would be ugly (casting object). So for now, I’m calling the method one time for each type, doing unnecessary multiple enumerations.

SOLVED: I don’t need ref for calling reflection methods on parameter class (SetValue, GetValue, InvokeMember etc), which means that I can skip the ref altogether. Really, I should have tried that.

Answer 1

On ref + params:

A member can’t be a reference. And since params transforms each parameter into array member this isn’t possible.

The only thing I can think of is manually creating a number of overloads.

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But in your case I don’t see why you need ref in the first place. To add members to a list you don’t need to change the reference itself, and thus don’t need to pass it my ref in the first place.