C# 2.0 Generics

[Sahil Malik]

How come Generics are always represented by a single letter, usually T?

Is that a language specification or just a common practice?

- Sahil Malik
You can reach me thru my blog at
http://www.dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/sahilmalik

 

[Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]]

Sahil,

It is just common practice, where T is short for "Type", which is what
you are supplying to the Generic. It is a holdover from C++ templates, I
believe, but there is no requirement that you name it "T". However, the
naming guidelines for .NET might end up suggesting that you use T, as
opposed to something else (since it is publically accessible, it is subject
to the public naming guidelines).

Hope this helps.

 

[Jochen Kalmbach]

Hi Sahil,

How come Generics are always represented by a single letter, usually T?

Is that a language specification or just a common practice?

=> common practice

--
Greetings
Jochen

My blog about Win32 and .NET
http://blog.kalmbachnet.de/

 

[Sriram Krishnan]

I remember some blog post which talked about how there was huge internal
discussions on whether this is a good practice. You see, its ok as long as
you stick to T and K. But what happens when you have more than 2 parameters?

Some one dig up the blogs.msdn.com post for me, please

 

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

I remember some blog post which talked about how there was huge internal
discussions on whether this is a good practice. You see, its ok as long as
you stick to T and K. But what happens when you have more than 2 parameters?

"T" usually just means "Type" as in "well, there's nothing particularly
significant about it". "K" usually means "Key" and "V" usually means
value. (K and V usually come together.)

Once you've got past those, I think you've exhausted 95% of the real
life uses of generics, to be honest. You can use anything you like, of
course...

 

[Sahil Malik]

Allright, thanks everyone, this answers it well.

I remember T from C++ days, but well, I just wanted to be sure thats all !!

- Sahil Malik
You can reach me thru my blog http://www.dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/sahilmalik

 

[James Curran]

Typically in C++ templates, T is used for the first, and U for the
second (particularly when the type truly could be nearly any type), which
covers the vast majority of templates. If a template needed more than that
(or if only a certain category of class could be used), usually, a
multi-letter Id is used which more closely indicates the purpose of it in
the template -- just as one would with parameters to a function.

--
Truth,
James Curran
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