How do I declare a Func Delegate which returns a Func Delegate of the same type?

Question

I'd like to write a method which does some work and finally returns another method with the same signature as the original method. The idea is to handle a stream of bytes depending on the previous byte value sequentially without going into a recursion. By calling it like this:

MyDelegate executeMethod = handleFirstByte //What form should be MyDelegate?

foreach (Byte myByte in Bytes)
{
    executeMethod = executeMethod(myByte); //does stuff on byte and returns the method to handle the following byte
}

To handover the method I want to assign them to a Func delegate. But I ran into the problem that this results in a recursive declaration without termination...

Func<byte, Func<byte, <Func<byte, etc... >>>

I'm somehow lost here. How could I get around that?

Knowle

Answer 1

You can simply declare a delegate type when the predefined Func<...> delegates aren't sufficient:

public delegate RecursiveFunc RecursiveFunc(byte input);

And in case you need it, you can use generics too:

public delegate RecursiveFunc<T> RecursiveFunc<T>(T input);

Mezereum

The signature of the method isn't know at compile time though. He doesn't know that the parameter is a Byte. – Cornwall

@Cornwall In that case... delegate RecursiveFunc<T> RecursiveFunc<T>(T input) – Mezereum

excellent - works like a charm. In my case I know that it's going to be a Byte, but +1 for the generic version. – Knowle