F# member constraints + ^a byref parameters

Question

After some playing around F# member constraints feature and writing function like this:

let inline parse< ^a when ^a : (static member Parse: string ->          


        

Answer 1

This compiles but still does not work as expected:

let inline tryParse< ^a when ^a: (static member TryParse: string -> ^a ref -> bool) > s =
  let x = ref Unchecked.defaultof< ^a>
  match (^a: (static member TryParse: string -> ^a ref -> bool )  (s, x)) with
    | false -> None
    | true -> Some(!x)

// returns [Some 0; Some 0; Some 0; null], so our tryParse is not retrieving the value from the ref
let xs = [ "1"; "456"; "999"; "a" ] |> List.map tryParse

in this specific case, rather than using reflection I would just recreate TryParse out of Parse in f#

let inline tryParse< ^a when ^a: (static member Parse: string -> ^a) > s =
  try  
    Some(^a: (static member Parse: string -> ^a)  s)
  with
    | exn -> None

let xs = [ "1"; "456"; "999"; "a" ] |> List.map tryParse