Is there a way to Memorize or Materialize an IEnumerable?

Question

When given an d you could be dealing with a fixed sequence like a list or array, an AST that will enumerate some external datasource, or even an AST on some exi

Answer 1

Check out this blog post I wrote a couple of years ago: http://www.fallingcanbedeadly.com/posts/crazy-extention-methods-tolazylist

In it, I define a method called ToLazyList that effectively does what you're looking for.

As written, it will eventually make a full copy of the input sequence, although you could tweak it so that instances of IList don't get wrapped in a LazyList, which would prevent this from happening (this action, however, would carry with it the assumption that any IList you get is already effectively memoized).

Answer 2

Easy enough:

public static IList<TSource> Materialize<TSource>(this IEnumerable<TSource> source)
{
    if (source is IList<TSource>)
    {
        // Already a list, use it as is
        return (IList<TSource>)source;
    }
    else
    {
        // Not a list, materialize it to a list
        return source.ToList();
    }
}

Answer 3

Original answer:

Same as Thomas's answer, just a bit better according to me:

public static ICollection<T> Materialize<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source)
{
    // Null check...
    return source as ICollection<T> ?? source.ToList();
}

Please note that this tend to return the existing collection itself if its a valid collection type, or produces a new collection otherwise. While the two are subtly different, I don't think it could be an issue.

---

Edit:

Today this is a better solution:

public static IReadOnlyCollection<T> Materialize<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source)
{
    // Null check...
    switch (source)
    {
        case ICollection<T> collection:
            return new ReadOnlyCollectionAdapter<T>(collection);

        case IReadOnlyCollection<T> readOnlyCollection:
            return readOnlyCollection;

        default:
            return source.ToList();
    }
}

public class ReadOnlyCollectionAdapter<T> : IReadOnlyCollection<T>
{
    readonly ICollection<T> m_source;

    public ReadOnlyCollectionAdapter(ICollection<T> source) => m_source = source;

    IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator() => GetEnumerator();

    public int Count => m_source.Count;

    public IEnumerator<T> GetEnumerator() => m_source.GetEnumerator();
}