Unmanaged constructed types
Before digging into this new C# feature, it is necessary to understand the subject by analyzing the definitions of unmanaged and constructed types cited by the language specifications:
- A type is called
constructedif it is generic and the type parameter is already defined. For example,List<string>is a constructed type whileList<T>is not. - A type is called
unmanagedwhen it can be used in an unsafe context. This is true for many built-in basic types. The official documentation includes the list of these types:sbyte,byte,short,ushort,int,uint,long,ulong,char,float,double,decimal,bool,enums,pointers, andstruct.
An example of an unmanaged constructed type that it was not possible to declare before C# 8 is as follows:
struct Header<T>
{
T Word1;
T Word2;
T Word3;
}
The two main advantages of allowing generic structs to be unmanaged...