Generic Collections

Given that in .NET 1.x, we could make a strongly-typed collection by
creating a class that inherited from CollectionBase and implementing custom
Add, Remove, and Item members that only work for a given type and that now,
with Generics we don't need to do that extra work, does it mean that to
fully implement a strongly typed Generic collection in .NET 2.0, I need
nothing more than something like this:

Public Class foo(Of T)
Inherits Generic.List(Of T)
End Class

Since the Generic.List type has Add, Remove, and Item (as well as the Find
methods and other useful collection members) and accessing any particular
item in the collection will return a strong type association to the
underlying object, then what else would I need?

Scott M. <smar (AT) nospam (DOT) nospam> wrote:

Given that in .NET 1.x, we could make a strongly-typed collection by
creating a class that inherited from CollectionBase and implementing custom
Add, Remove, and Item members that only work for a given type and that now,
with Generics we don't need to do that extra work, does it mean that to
fully implement a strongly typed Generic collection in .NET 2.0, I need
nothing more than something like this:

Public Class foo(Of T)
Inherits Generic.List(Of T)
End Class

You don't even need that. Just use List(Of T) directly in your code -
unless you're actually adding any functionality to it, why bother
creating a new class to derive from it?

--
Jon Skeet - <skeet (AT) pobox (DOT) com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
World class .NET training in the UK: http://iterativetraining.co.uk

Ok thanks.


"Jon Skeet [C# MVP]" <skeet (AT) pobox (DOT) com> wrote

Scott M. <smar (AT) nospam (DOT) nospam> wrote:
Given that in .NET 1.x, we could make a strongly-typed collection by
creating a class that inherited from CollectionBase and implementing
custom
Add, Remove, and Item members that only work for a given type and that
now,
with Generics we don't need to do that extra work, does it mean that to
fully implement a strongly typed Generic collection in .NET 2.0, I need
nothing more than something like this:

Public Class foo(Of T)
Inherits Generic.List(Of T)
End Class

You don't even need that. Just use List(Of T) directly in your code -
unless you're actually adding any functionality to it, why bother
creating a new class to derive from it?

--
Jon Skeet - <skeet (AT) pobox (DOT) com
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
World class .NET training in the UK: http://iterativetraining.co.uk

Scott M. wrote:

Given that in .NET 1.x, we could make a strongly-typed collection by
creating a class that inherited from CollectionBase and implementing custom
Add, Remove, and Item members that only work for a given type and that now,
with Generics we don't need to do that extra work, does it mean that to
fully implement a strongly typed Generic collection in .NET 2.0, I need
nothing more than something like this:

Public Class foo(Of T)
Inherits Generic.List(Of T)
End Class

Since the Generic.List type has Add, Remove, and Item (as well as the Find
methods and other useful collection members) and accessing any particular
item in the collection will return a strong type association to the
underlying object, then what else would I need?

Don't forget Collection(Of T) base class. It has virtual methods to
notify you of changes to the collection, should you be interested in
them, which can be a reason to override.

-- Barry

--
http://barrkel.blogspot.com/