Is there a .NET collection interface that prevents adding objects?

Question

I have a class that maintains list of objects of another class. List of objects is a public property. I would like to prevent users from adding and removing objects directly

Answer 1

Maybe AsReadOnly method will do the trick, to hand a read-only instance to public.

Otherwise, IEnumerable has no Add nor Remove, so you can do something like:

private List _myList;
public IEnumerable MyList
{
   get
   {
      return this._myList.ToList();
   }
}

I would rather go for the IEnumerable (+ copy) as for ReadOnlyCollection, because: changes to your base list (which your read-only collection is created from) will immediately show up in your instance of the read-only collection. this may cause locking and straaange problems :)