A simple range structure

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Introduction

In this article I'll present a simple data structure I had a need for. As its name suggests, it consists of two fields, the start and the end, which define inclusive bounds of a range the structure represents. The relation between bounds could exist as follows:

• The end is greater than the start
• The end is equal as the start meaning the range is consisted of only one representative
• The end is one less than the start meaning the range is empty

The structure contains following members:

Constructors

• Range(int start, int end) - constructs a range of given bounds
• Range(ICollection col) - setup range to collection's lower and upper bounds

Properties

• int start - get or set lower bound
• int end - get or set upper bound
• int mid - get center point
• int [] - obtain an element by a zero-based index
• int Count - get a number of elements
• bool Empty - returns true if range has no elements

Functions

• void Set(int start, int end) - redefines a range
• bool Between(int value) - returns true if value is within current range
• int Saturate(int value) - forces value between current bounds
• void Offset(int o) - moves range by o
• void Resize(int s) - moves upper bound by s

Range structure is declared as an ICollection, meaning, it could be used as a simple sequential number generator. For example:

foreach(int i in new Range(1, 10)) Console.Out.WriteLine(i);

Since the structure is consisted of only two fields which are mostly accessed in pair, I believe it was a reasonable choice to declare it as a value type.

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