CLSS.ExtensionMethods.IComparable.ClampToRange

Problem

The process to clamp a value to a range is somewhat long:

if (value < min) value = min;
else if (value > max) value = max;

Even longer when the type of your value does not implement comparison operators:

// Type of meetingDate is System.DateTime
if (meetingDate.CompareTo(startDate) < 0) meetingDate = startDate;
else if (meetingDate.CompareTo(endDate) > 0) meetingDate = endDate;

The System.Math.Clamp method can do this operation in one line, but it only supports a limited number of primitive types. Types such as System.Version and System.DateTime are not supported.

Solution

ClampToRange does this in a more intuitive, shorter and functional style friendly way:

using CLSS;

value = value.ClampToRange(min, max);

No more short stops in your code reading to decode the meanings of comparison operators. When you read ClampToRange, you know what it's doing.

ClampToRange has a wider range of supported types than System.Math.Clamp. It supports all IComparable<T> types. For non-generic IComparable types, the equivalent method provided by this package is ClampToRangeNonGeneric.

using CLSS;

// System.DateTime implements IComparable<T>
meetingDate = meetingDate.ClampToRange(startDate, endDate);

ClampToRange can also take in CLSS type ValueRange on .NET Standard 2.0 or higher.

using CLSS;

var displayableRange = new ValueRange(0, 9999);
int value = value.ClampToRange(displayableRange);

This package is a part of the C# Language Syntactic Sugar suite.