How can I create a method in C# that doesn't care about the location of its parameters?

Question

Idk if what I said makes sense, if not, here's an example of what I mean:

I created a method which performs "scalar-matrix" multiplication, aka every element of a 2d array gets multiplied by a scalar (by a decimal). Now, it doesn't matter if you do array * decimal or decimal * array, either way you should get the same answer. So far this is what I have:

public static double[,] ScalarMatrixMult(double[,] A, double n)
{
    for (int i = 0; i < A.GetLength(0); i++)
    {
        for (int j = 0; j < A.GetLength(1); j++)
        {
            A[i, j] = A[i, j] * n ;
        }
    }

    return A;
}

public static double[,] ScalarMatrixMult2(double n, double[,] A)
{
    for (int i = 0; i < A.GetLength(0); i++)
    {
        for (int j = 0; j < A.GetLength(1); j++)
        {
            A[i, j] = A[i, j] * n;
        }
    }

    return A;
}

I have 2 different methods for doing the exact same thing... Because they care about the location of the parameters.

Can I somehow capture that idea of "not caring about the location of parameters" in 1 method? Or maybe I can use one of them inside the other? I really want to avoid having to use 2 different names for essentially the same thing (and copy-pasting code snippets).

Answer 1

I really want to avoid having to use 2 different names for essentially the same thing (and copy-pasting code snippets).

You can overload the method, using the same name, and simply make one version just call the other:

public static double[,] ScalarMatrixMult(double n, double[,] A)
{
    return ScalarMatrixMult(A, n);
}
 
public static double[,] ScalarMatrixMult(double[,] A, double n)
{
    for (int i = 0; i < A.GetLength(0); i++)
    {
        for (int j = 0; j < A.GetLength(1); j++)
        {
            A[i, j] = A[i, j] * n ;
        }
    }

    return A;
}