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POCLS-compliant alternative for ulong property
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copied!<h3>Background</h3> <p>I am writing a managed x64 assembler (which is also a library), so it has multiple classes which define an unsigned 64-bit integer property for use as addresses and offsets. Some are file offsets, others are absolute addresses (relative to the main memory) and again others are relative virtual addresses.</p> <h3>Problem</h3> <p>I use the <code>ulong</code> datatype for the properties in the mentioned scenarios, and this works fine. However, such properties are not CLS-compliant. I can mark them as <code>[ClsCompliant(false)]</code>, but then I need to provide a CLS-compliant alternative to users of the library.</p> <h3>Options and questions</h3> <p>Some <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5514855/pattern-for-naming-cls-compatible-alternative-properties">suggest</a> providing an alternative property with a bigger data type, but this is not an option because there is no bigger signed integer primitive which could hold all values from <code>0</code> to <code>UInt64.MaxValue</code>.</p> <p>I would rather not mark my entire assembly as non-CLS-compliant, because in most usage scenario's, not all the possible values up to <code>UInt64.MaxValue</code> are used. So, for e.g. <code>Address</code> I could provide an alternative <code>long</code> property <code>AddressAlternative</code>, which only accepts positive values. However, what should happen when <code>Address</code> somehow contains a value above <code>Int64.MaxValue</code>. Should <code>AddressAlternative</code> throw some exception?</p> <p>And what would be an appropriate name for <code>AddressAlternative</code>?</p> <p>Providing an alternative for every usage of <code>ulong</code> would result in many 'double' properties. Is there a better way to do this? Note that not all usages of <code>ulong</code> properties have the same semantics, so a single <code>struct</code> would not cut it.</p> <p>And finally, I have the same CLS compliance problem in constructor parameters. So should I provide an alternative overload accepting <code>long</code> for such a parameter?</p> <p>I do not mind restricting the use of (some functionality) of the library when it is used from a CLS-only context, as long as it can be used in most scenarios.</p>

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