Any elegant way to operate with generic types? [duplicate]

Answer 1

One workaround with decent performance (that's still ugly) is using a struct that encapsulates the arithmetic behavior you want.

You first define an interface:

public interface IArithmetic
{
    T Add(T n1,T n2);
}

Then you implement that interface using a struct:

public struct DoubleArithmetic:IArithmetic
{
    public double Add(double n1,double n2)
    {
        return n1+n2;
    }
}

And finally you pass the struct as generic parameter into your type:

public class Matrix
  where TArithmetic:struct, IArithmetic
{
  private static readonly TArithmetic arithmetic=new TArithmetic();

  void DoStuff()
  {
    arithmetic.Add(1,2);
  }
}

I haven't benchmarked it, but I suspect it's rather fast since generics get specialized for each value type passed into it. That's why DoubleArithmetic is a struct.