In my application, I've got a class which I would like to behave like a value type whenever copied:
public class SpecialId
{
private int internalValue;
public SpecialId(int id)
{
internalValue = id;
}
//integer conversions
public static implicit operator SpecialIdint index) => new SpecialId(index);
public static implicit operator int(SpecialId obj) => obj.internalValue;
}
(This type is really just an integer, but I want to do this so that any routine that is expecting a SpecialId will cause a compiler error if I pass it SomeOtherKindOfId.)
Because I want this to behave like an integer, I'd like it to work so that if I write
var copiedId = mySpecialId
then copiedId will be a value copy, not a reference copy, as you would have with an integer.
Is this possible?
(I know I could use a struct instead, but there are some unrelated reasons why I don't think I can do this.)
Edit:
The reason I don't want to use a struct is that this class is actually inheriting from a base class that does a bunch of things to support this usage, such as implementing Object.Equals, Object.ToString, and the like, so that I can have multiple instances of them without repeating a ton of boilerplate code. But you can't have an inherited struct in c#, so I'm using a class here.
