How do you cast a Unity.Object into a generic class member? - unity3d

Question

I am a decades-old C programmer. Unity is my first foray into modern C and I find myself pleasantly surprised - but some of the subtleties of the language have escaped me.
First a technical question: What is the right way to store a Unity Object in a generic class? In the example below I get the following error:
Assets/scripts/MediaTest.cs(49,44): error CS0030: Cannot convert type `UnityEngine.Texture2D' to `T'
Second the real question: What is a better approach to loading a set of textures?
Thanks in advance for your help
/*
* MediaTest.cs
*
* Pared down generic class test
*
*/
using System.Collections; // Load IEnumerable
using System.Collections.Generic; // Load Dictionary
using System.Text.RegularExpressions; // Load Regex
using UnityEngine; // Load UnityEngine.Object
public class MediaTest<T> : IEnumerable where T : UnityEngine.Object {
private Dictionary<string, MediaContent> _dict =
new Dictionary<string, MediaContent>();
private class MediaContent {
public string path { get; set; }
public T item { get; set; }
public MediaContent(string path, T item) {
this.path = path;
this.item = item;
}
}
// Indexer to return a UnityEngine.Object by filename
public T this[string name] {
get { return (T)_dict[name].item; }
}
// Convert a path to just the filename
public string Basename(string path) {
return new Regex(#"^.*/").Replace(path, "");
}
// Iterate through the filenames (keys) to the stored objects
public IEnumerator GetEnumerator() {
foreach (string name in _dict.Keys) {
yield return name;
}
}
// Read in the Resource at the specified path into a UnityEngine.Object
public void Load(string path, bool load=false) {
string name = Basename(path);
if (this.GetType() == typeof(Media<Texture2D>) && IsStill(name)) {
T item = (load) ? (T)Resources.Load<Texture2D>(path) : null;
_dict[name] = new MediaContent(path, item);
return;
}
if (this.GetType() == typeof(Media<AudioClip>) && IsAudio(name)) {
T item = (load) ? (T)Resources.Load<AudioClip>(path) : null;
_dict[name] = new MediaContent(path, item);
return;
}
}
// The real code uses Regex.Match on the file extension for supported types
public bool IsStill(string name) { return true; }
public bool IsAudio(string name) { return true; }
}

Answer 1

Here is the working code with updates from the comments. Thanks derHugo!
public void Load(string path, bool load=false) {
// Translate the filesystem path to a Resources relative path by removing both
// The */Resources prefix and the filename extention
Regex re_path = new Regex(#".*/Resources/");
Regex re_ext = new Regex(#"\.\w+$");
string relpath = re_ext.Replace(re_path.Replace(path, ""), "");
// Create an asset name from the path
string name = System.IO.Path.GetFileName(relpath);
// Skip this file if it doesn't match our type
if ( (typeof(T) == typeof(Texture2D) && IsStill(path)) ||
// (typeof(T) == typeof(Video) && IsVideo(path)) ||
(typeof(T) == typeof(AudioClip) && IsAudio(name))) {
T item = (load) ? Resources.Load(relpath) as T : null;
_dict[name] = new MediaContent(path, item);
}
}