Can I Create a Dictionary of Generic Types?

Question

I\'d like to create a Dictionary object, with string Keys, holding values which are of a generic type. I imagine that it would look something like this:

Dict         


        

Answer 1

I prefer this way of putting generic types into a collection:

interface IList
{
  void Add (object item);
}

class MyList : List, IList
{
  public void Add (object item)
  {
    base.Add ((T) item); // could put a type check here
  }
}

class Program
{
  static void Main (string [] args)
  {
    SortedDictionary
      dict = new SortedDictionary ();

    dict [0] = new MyList ();
    dict [1] = new MyList ();

    dict [0].Add (42);
    dict [1].Add ("Hello"); // Fails! Type cast exception.
  }
}

But you do lose the type checks at compile time.