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Question by Nanako · Mar 01, 2015 at 11:29 PM · generic

Is there any generic variable type?

I'd like to pass two pieces of data to a function. One will be either a float, int, or string. And the other will be an integer telling you what type of data the first value is, in order to cast it.

is there any type of generic variable type i can use as an intermediary before casting?

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Answer by DiegoSLTS · Mar 02, 2015 at 12:01 AM

Passing generic objects and types to a function and casting inside looks like something you should rework in your design, that's usually a sign that it should be done in a different way.

Anyway, there are safer methods to have functions that receive different types of parameters:

  1. Method overloading, define methods with the same name for each type you want, each one receiving only one variable of a concrete type and the compiler will know what method to call. If methods are similar enough (they should, since you're making a unique function to handle all of them) you can call any of the other to avoid repeating code 3 times.

  2. Use generic functions, define only one function this way:

      void function<T>(T param) {
             /* do stuff */
         }
    
    

and then call the function this way:

 function<someClass>(myVariableOfThatClass);



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Answer by karljj1 · Mar 01, 2015 at 11:37 PM

You could use object

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avatar image Nanako · Mar 03, 2015 at 10:40 PM 0
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im still running into this problem, but nnow im trying to create a generic array. It will, at the very least, hold ints, floats, and Vector3's. at least thats what i want it to do

cannot implicitly cast those types to object, or to string either apparently.

any idea what i could do?

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