Why is .ForEach() on IList and not on IEnumerable? [duplicate]

Answer 1

I honestly don't know for sure why the .ForEach(Action) isn't included on IEnumerable but, right, wrong or indifferent, that's the way it is...

I DID however want to highlight the performance issue mentioned in other comments. There is a performance hit based on how you loop over a collection. It is relatively minor but nevertheless, it certainly exists. Here is an incredibly fast and sloppy code snippet to show the relations... only takes a minute or so to run through.

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Start Loop timing test: loading collection...");
        List<int> l = new List<int>();

        for (long i = 0; i < 60000000; i++)
        {
            l.Add(Convert.ToInt32(i));
        }

        Console.WriteLine("Collection loaded with {0} elements: start timings",l.Count());
        Console.WriteLine("\n<===============================================>\n");
        Console.WriteLine("foreach loop test starting...");

        DateTime start = DateTime.Now;

        //l.ForEach(x => l[x].ToString());

        foreach (int x in l)
            l[x].ToString();

        Console.WriteLine("foreach Loop Time for {0} elements = {1}", l.Count(), DateTime.Now - start);
        Console.WriteLine("\n<===============================================>\n");
        Console.WriteLine("List.ForEach(x => x.action) loop test starting...");

        start = DateTime.Now;

        l.ForEach(x => l[x].ToString());

        Console.WriteLine("List.ForEach(x => x.action) Loop Time for {0} elements = {1}", l.Count(), DateTime.Now - start);
        Console.WriteLine("\n<===============================================>\n");

        Console.WriteLine("for loop test starting...");

        start = DateTime.Now;
        int count = l.Count();
        for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
        {
            l[i].ToString();
        }

        Console.WriteLine("for Loop Time for {0} elements = {1}", l.Count(), DateTime.Now - start);
        Console.WriteLine("\n<===============================================>\n");

        Console.WriteLine("\n\nPress Enter to continue...");
        Console.ReadLine();
    }

Don't get hung up on this too much though. Performance is the currency of application design but unless your application is experiencing an actual performance hit that is causing usability problems, focus on coding for maintainability and reuse since time is the currency of real life business projects...

Answer 2

ForEach is implemented in the concrete class List<T>

Answer 3

ForEach isn't on IList it's on List. You were using the concrete List in your example.

Answer 4

According to Eric Lippert, this is mostly for philosophical reasons. You should read the whole post, but here's the gist as far as I'm concerned:

I am philosophically opposed to providing such a method, for two reasons.

The first reason is that doing so violates the functional programming principles that all the other sequence operators are based upon. Clearly the sole purpose of a call to this method is to cause side effects.

The purpose of an expression is to compute a value, not to cause a side effect. The purpose of a statement is to cause a side effect. The call site of this thing would look an awful lot like an expression (though, admittedly, since the method is void-returning, the expression could only be used in a “statement expression” context.)

It does not sit well with me to make the one and only sequence operator that is only useful for its side effects.

The second reason is that doing so adds zero new representational power to the language.

Answer 5

Just a guess, but List can iterate over its items without creating an enumerator:

public void ForEach(Action<T> action)
{
    if (action == null)
    {
        ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentNullException(ExceptionArgument.match);
    }
    for (int i = 0; i < this._size; i++)
    {
        action(this._items[i]);
    }
}

This can lead to better performance. With IEnumerable, you don't have the option to use an ordinary for-loop.

Answer 6

I am just guessing here , but putting foreach on IEnumerable would make operations on it to have side effects . None of the "available" extension methods cause side effects , putting an imperative method like foreach on there would muddy the api I guess . Also, foreach would initialize the lazy collection .

Personally I've been fending off the temptation to just add my own , just to keep side effect free functions separate from ones with side effects.