C# memcpy equivalent for vectors (C# List<T>) (Syntactic sugar)

Question

I'm in the process of converting an old C++ library to C#.

The C++ library heavily relies on overwriting certain elements of a std::vector<T> by using memcpy(&source[d_index],&source[s_index],count*sizeof(<T>)); (note that source and target are the same here, just different indices)

My C# port of this (by implementing ICloneable and source obviously being a List<T> where T is a reference type) is:

 for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
    source[d_index + i] = source[s_index + i].Clone(); 

This works as supposed.

However, my question is: Is there a simpler version? I obviously can't use List.InsertRange(d_index, List.GetRange(s_index, count)) because this method inserts instead of overwrite.

I can't use List<T>.CopyTo Method (Int32, T[], Int32, Int32) either as the destination has to be an array of T[] and not the list itself.

Is there a method that does what memcpy does for this specific example? I know I could easily implement an extension method myself, I was just wondering if I missed something on MSDN.

Answer 1

I have run into this problem myself and i came to the same conclusion either use Clone or make a copy constructor yourself.

For the CopyTo method i forgot but doesnt it just copy the references again? Other then that you can save those into a array as you said and use AddRange(array).

Answer 2

How about RemoveRange, followed by Insert range? Obviously only if the ranges do not overlap.