自定义隐式投射与公共财产

Question

Ok so I have a Top-level class that is used to monitor a bunch of different values, which range from value types to reference types. Now my question is what is the difference between setting up implicit casting for the top level class instead of setting up public properties.

Some code to illustrate.

This:

 public static implicit operator int(TopLevel TP)
 {
       return TP.DataLevel1.DataLevel2.DataLeverl3.Data;
 }

Compared to:

 public int DataLevel3Value
 {
      get
      {
          return this.DataLevel1.DataLevel2.DataLeverl3.Data;
      }
 }

Is there a reason I would not want to do the Implicit version compared to the Property version? Also is the code bellow valid?

 (TP == 10) == (TP.DataLevel3Value == 10) == true;

I do realize the implicit conversion possibility introduces a slight lack of readability however this is a small project with only one other programmer. We are just curious if there are serious drawbacks that would inhibit functionality of the program that we are missing.

Answer 1

Definitely DO NOT write implicit casts like this. Implicit casts are reserved for when no data can be lost when converting from one type to another. From the documentation :

The implicit keyword is used to declare an implicit user-defined type conversion operator. Use it to enable implicit conversions between a user-defined type and another type, if the conversion is guaranteed not to cause a loss of data .

In your example, it does cause a loss of information. The property is clearly a better way to go.

You mentioned that it reduces readability, and your absolutely right. In the vast majority of cases you should favor improved readability over any syntactic sugar which merely lets you write code with fewer character, regardless of project size.