Question

Working with C# Generics you can have a class like this:

class Foo<T> where T:new() {}

Which means that the type T should have a constructor without parameters. It would be nice if we could have:

class Foo<T> where T : new(string)
{
    private T CreateItem()
    {
        string s="";
        return new T(s);
    }
}

Is there any reason that Microsoft haven’t added this feature to the language?

Answer 1

Is there any reason that Microsoft haven’t added this feature to the language?

The feature you describe is a specific case of the of the more general feature “allow a constraint that requires a particular method to exist”. For example, you might say:

void M<T>(T t) where T has an accessible method with signature double Foo(int)
{
    double x = t.Foo(123);
}

We don’t have that feature in C# because features have to be justified by a cost-benefit analysis. That would be a pretty expensive feature from both a design and implementation point of view — a feature that would drive requirements onto not just C# but every .NET language. What’s the compelling benefit that justifies the feature?

Moreover: suppose we did design that feature. How would it be implemented efficiently? The constraints in the generic type system have been carefully designed so that the jitter can generate efficient code once that can then be shared for every reference type. How would we generate efficient code for arbitrary method pattern matching? That sort of efficient dispatch is pretty straightforward when the method’s slot can be known at compile time; with this feature we would no longer have that advantage.

The feature you want is the same feature, just with the kind of method restricted to a constructor.

Remember, the purpose of generics is to let you write generically typed code. If you’re requiring constraints that are more specific than things that can be captured in the type system then you might be trying to abuse generics.