C# - AsEnumerable Example

Question

What is the exact use of AsEnumerable? Will it change non-enumerable collection to enumerable collection?.Please give me a simple example.

Answer 1

From the "Remarks" section of the MSDN documentation:

The AsEnumerable method has no effect other than to change the compile-time type of source from a type that implements IEnumerable to IEnumerable itself.

AsEnumerable can be used to choose between query implementations when a sequence implements IEnumerable but also has a different set of public query methods available. For example, given a generic class Table that implements IEnumerable and has its own methods such as Where, Select, and SelectMany, a call to Where would invoke the public Where method of Table. A Table type that represents a database table could have a Where method that takes the predicate argument as an expression tree and converts the tree to SQL for remote execution. If remote execution is not desired, for example because the predicate invokes a local method, the AsEnumerable method can be used to hide the custom methods and instead make the standard query operators available.