C# - How can I "overload" a delegate?

Question

First, I was reading some forums and the help in MSDN and all says that a delegate can't be overloaded.

Now, I want to have something like this:

public delegate void OneDelegate();
public delegate void OneDelegate(params object[] a);

public void DoNothing(params object[] a) {}
public void DoSomething() { /* do something */ }

private OneDelegate someFunction;

someFunction = new OneDelegate(DoSomething);
someFunction = new OneDelegate(DoNothing);

So, like you know, you CAN'T do this, because OneDelegate only refers to the first one and not the second one. But, is there a way for doing this? or something like that?

PS1: I want to have any number of OneDelegate declarations, not just one or two.

Solution 1

Imagine for a moment this was possible. Suppose I could have an overloaded delegate:

public delegate void OneDelegate(int i);
public delegate void OneDelegate(string s);

Now imagine I declare a variable of this type and then assign a function to it, for example:

OneDelegate myDelegate = StringMethod;

where StringMethod is declared thusly:

public void StringMethod(string s) { Console.WriteLine(s); }

Now you pass myDelegate to some other code, and that code does this:

myDelegate(47);

What do you expect to happen in this case? How can the runtime call StringMethod() with an integer argument?

If you really want a delegate that can take any set of parameters at all, then the only option is to have one with a params object[] array:

public delegate void OneDelegate(params object[] parameters);

But then you will have to assign to it a function that can actually handle any object array, for example:

public void MyMethod(params object[] parameters)
{
    if (parameters == null || parameters.Length == 0)
        throw new ArgumentException("No parameters specified.");
    if (parameters.Length > 1)
        throw new ArgumentException("Too many parameters specified.");

    if (parameters[0] is int)
        IntMethod((int) parameters[0]);
    else if (parameters[0] is string)
        StringMethod((string) parameters[0]);
    else
        throw new ArgumentException("Unsupported parameter type.");
}

As you can see, this gets messy real quick. Therefore, I submit to you that if you need such a delegate, you have probably made a mistake somewhere in your architectural design. Identify this flaw and fix the design before you proceed with the implementation, as otherwise the maintainability of your code will suffer.

Solution 2

The Action class "does this". It's a delegate with templates, so you can have a delegate like this:

public delegate void D<T>(params T[] arg);

func() {
    D<object> d1;
}

This is probably as close as you are going to get, i.e. you need a template type as a parameter.

Edit: Based on comments I guess you are after passing a delegate to another function. You can accomplish it by passing along the arguments as well. Unfortunately you cannot do this without the use of a params parameter to fire.

public void bar() {
    D<string> d = ...;
    fire(d, "first", "second");
    fire(d); // also works
}

public void fire<T>(D<T> f, params T[] args) {
    f(args);
}