How can I implement NotOfType<T> in LINQ that has a nice calling syntax?
- by Lette
I'm trying to come up with an implementation for NotOfType, which has a readable call syntax. NotOfType should be the complement to OfType<T> and would consequently yield all elements that are not of type T
My goal was to implement a method which would be called just like OfType<T>, like in the last line of this snippet:
public abstract class Animal {}
public class Monkey : Animal {}
public class Giraffe : Animal {}
public class Lion : Animal {}
var monkey = new Monkey();
var giraffe = new Giraffe();
var lion = new Lion();
IEnumerable<Animal> animals = new Animal[] { monkey, giraffe, lion };
IEnumerable<Animal> fewerAnimals = animals.NotOfType<Giraffe>();
However, I can not come up with an implementation that supports that specific calling syntax.
This is what I've tried so far:
public static class EnumerableExtensions
{
public static IEnumerable<T> NotOfType<T>(this IEnumerable<T> sequence, Type type)
{
return sequence.Where(x => x.GetType() != type);
}
public static IEnumerable<T> NotOfType<T, TExclude>(this IEnumerable<T> sequence)
{
return sequence.Where(x => !(x is TExclude));
}
}
Calling these methods would look like this:
// Animal is inferred
IEnumerable<Animal> fewerAnimals = animals.NotOfType(typeof(Giraffe));
and
// Not all types could be inferred, so I have to state all types explicitly
IEnumerable<Animal> fewerAnimals = animals.NotOfType<Animal, Giraffe>();
I think that there are major drawbacks with the style of both of these calls. The first one suffers from a redundant "of type/type of" construct, and the second one just doesn't make sense (do I want a list of animals that are neither Animals nor Giraffes?).
So, is there a way to accomplish what I want? If not, could it be possible in future versions of the language? (I'm thinking that maybe one day we will have named type arguments, or that we only need to explicitly supply type arguments that can't be inferred?)
Or am I just being silly?
