Equivalent of typedef in C#

No, there's no true equivalent of typedef. You can use 'using' directives within one file, e.g.

using CustomerList = System.Collections.Generic.List<Customer>;

but that will only impact that source file. In C and C++, my experience is that typedef is usually used within .h files which are included widely - so a single typedef can be used over a whole project. That ability does not exist in C#, because there's no #include functionality in C# that would allow you to include the using directives from one file in another.

Fortunately, the example you give does have a fix - implicit method group conversion. You can change your event subscription line to just:

gcInt.MyEvent += gcInt_MyEvent;

:)


Jon really gave a nice solution, I didn't know you could do that!

At times what I resorted to was inheriting from the class and creating its constructors. E.g.

public class FooList : List<Foo> { ... }

Not the best solution (unless your assembly gets used by other people), but it works.


If you know what you're doing, you can define a class with implicit operators to convert between the alias class and the actual class.

class TypedefString // Example with a string "typedef"
{
    private string Value = "";
    public static implicit operator string(TypedefString ts)
    {
        return ((ts == null) ? null : ts.Value);
    }
    public static implicit operator TypedefString(string val)
    {
        return new TypedefString { Value = val };
    }
}

I don't actually endorse this and haven't ever used something like this, but this could probably work for some specific circumstances.

Tags:

C#

Typedef