What's the return type of a LINQ query?

Question

Is it IEnumerable. As far as I know, the reference always points to a class instance. What instance type does the LINQ query really point to?

Answer 1

Depending on your original data source, it is either IEnumerable or IQueryable:

The result of a Linq database query is typically IQueryable which is derived from IEnumerable, IQueryable, and IEnumerable.

If your database query includes an OrderBy clause, the type is IOrderedQueryable, being derived from IQueryable

If your data source is an IEnumerable, the result type is IEnumerable