Can you make extension indexers?

[Jessy]

I looked elsewhere on the internet, and if the answer is out there, it seems heavily obscured. For example, I want to make an indexer for Rect, the same way we have one for Vector4 or Color. Can it be done?

[Peter_G]

Not a great solution, but I'll suggest it anyway since I can't think of anyway to create extension indexers nicely. You can create a custom class that functions just like Rect and allows implicit conversions to and from Rect. Then you can manipulate the data in your custom class and pass it to methods just like a Rect. The obvious down side is that you have to re-implement all the methods.

public struct PRect {

      public PRect () { //some values = other values }
      public PRect (Rect prototype) { //copy values over }

      public float this[int index] { 
          get{ return value; }
          set( values[index] = value; }
      }

      public static implicit operator Rect(PRect p) { return newRect; }
      public static implicit operator PRect(Rect r) { return newPRect; }
}

Unfortunately this would be mostly a waste of time re-implementing all the methods, but depending on what your doing it might be useful. Fortunately `Rect` isn't a very large class.

Oh and not to mention the performance hit from casting.

[DaveA]

You mean using [square brackets] to access members in a Rect? If so, couldn't you subclass it and add indexer functions ala http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2549tw02.aspx, assigning each part individually (I would guess), like if index==0 return x, index==2 return width, etc.