Duck typing in the C# compiler
There's nothing special about IDisposable
here - but there is something special about iterators.
Before C# 2, using this duck type on foreach
was the only was you could implement a strongly-typed iterator, and also the only way of iterating over value types without boxing. I suspect that if C# and .NET had had generics to start with, foreach
would have required IEnumerable<T>
instead, and not had the duck typing.
Now the compiler uses this sort of duck typing in a couple of other places I can think of:
- Collection initializers look for a suitable
Add
overload (as well as the type having to implementIEnumerable
, just to show that it really is a collection of some kind); this allows for flexible adding of single items, key/value pairs etc - LINQ (
Select
etc) - this is how LINQ achieves its flexibility, allowing the same query expression format against multiple types, without having to changeIEnumerable<T>
itself - The C# 5 await expressions require
GetAwaiter
to return an awaiter type which hasIsCompleted
/OnCompleted
/GetResult
In both cases this makes it easier to add the feature to existing types and interfaces, where the concept didn't exist earlier on.
Given that IDisposable
has been in the framework since the very first version, I don't think there would be any benefit in duck typing the using
statement. I know you explicitly tried to discount the reasons for having Dispose
without implementing IDisposable
from the discussion, but I think it's a crucial point. There need to be good reasons to implement a feature in the language, and I would argue that duck typing is a feature above-and-beyond supporting a known interface. If there's no clear benefit in doing so, it won't end up in the language.
There's no chicken and egg: foreach
could depend on IEnumerable
since IEnumerable
doesn't depend on foreach
. The reason foreach is permitted on collections not implementing IEnumerable
is probably largely historic:
In C#, it is not strictly necessary for a collection class to inherit from IEnumerable and IEnumerator in order to be compatible with foreach; as long as the class has the required GetEnumerator, MoveNext, Reset, and Current members, it will work with foreach. Omitting the interfaces has the advantage of allowing you to define the return type of Current to be more specific than object, thereby providing type-safety.
Furthermore, not all chicken and egg problems are actually problems: for example a function can call itself (recursion!) or a reference type can contain itself (like a linked list).
So when using
came around why would they use something as tricky to specify as duck typing when they can simply say: implement IDisposable
? Fundamentally, by using duck typing you're doing an end-run around the type system, which is only useful when the type system is insufficient (or impractical) to address a problem.