[Feature Request] ByteArray (byte[]) or BitArray) implementation

[jeffward01]

Hello!

I was working on a PR myself for this, but I have been stumped since byte[] and BitArray do not implement the IComparable interface.

You know your library much better than I do - do you have any advice how an implementation for this can be done?

My thoughts are to:

• Create some internal 'wrapper' type for byte[]
• Autmatically cast the byte[] to the wrapper type
• Keep the wrapper type 'hidden' from the user (developer) in an internal class / struct

What do you think? Any advice? Im struggling with the wrapper type being convertible to your IBaseType in the code

Can you point me in the right direction with solving this?

public class BitArrayComparable : IComparable<byte[]>

{
    private readonly byte[] _bitArray;

    public BitArrayComparable(byte[] bitArray)
    {
        this._bitArray = bitArray;
    }

    /// <inheritdoc />
    public int CompareTo(byte[]? other)
    {
        var len = Math.Min(this._bitArray.Length, other.Length);
        for (var i = 0; i < len; i++)
        {
            var c = this._bitArray[i]
                .CompareTo(other[i]);
            if (c != 0)
            {
                return c;
            }
        }

        return other.Length.CompareTo(other.Length);
    }
} 

I had something like this, but its not convertible to IBaseType

Thanks

[Andreas-Dorfer]

That's an open issue #15. The generated base type should only implement IComparable when the wrapped type implements IComparable. I already did an exploration on that but didn't finish it yet (see branch feature/IComparable).

That means, there should be no IComparable implementation for Array / BitArray.

That would fix your issue, right?

[jeffward01]

I don't know if that will work. The issue is that byte can implement IComparable, but with byte[] it is an array, rather than a value type like int - so we'd need to also add the ability in some capacity to add custom implementations of the IComparable<> interface like I showed above.

I think perhaps we are saying the same thing?