C#: Getting maximum and minimum values of arbitrary properties of all items in a list

Question

I have a specialized list that holds items of type IThing:

public class ThingList : IList
{...}

public interface IThing
{
    Decimal         


        

Answer 1

If using .NET 3.5, why not use lambdas?

public Decimal GetMaximum(Func prop) {
    Decimal result = Decimal.MinValue;
    foreach (IThing thing in this)
        result = Math.Max(result, prop(thing));

    return result;
}

Usage:

Decimal result = list.GetMaximum(x => x.Weight);

This is strongly typed and efficient. There are also extension methods that already do exactly this.