Getting the array key in a 'foreach' loop

Question

How do I get the key of the current element in a foreach loop in C#?

For example:

PHP

foreach ($array as $key => $value)
{
             


        

Answer 1

I answered this in another version of this question:

Foreach is for iterating over collections that implement IEnumerable. It does this by calling GetEnumerator on the collection, which will return an Enumerator.

This Enumerator has a method and a property:

* MoveNext()
* Current

Current returns the object that Enumerator is currently on, MoveNext updates Current to the next object.

Obviously, the concept of an index is foreign to the concept of enumeration, and cannot be done.

Because of that, most collections are able to be traversed using an indexer and the for loop construct.

I greatly prefer using a for loop in this situation compared to tracking the index with a local variable.

How do you get the index of the current iteration of a foreach loop?

Answer 2

If you want to get at the key (read: index) then you'd have to use a for loop. If you actually want to have a collection that holds keys/values then I'd consider using a HashTable or a Dictionary (if you want to use Generics).

Dictionary<int, string> items = new  Dictionary<int, string>();

foreach (int key in items.Keys)
{
  Console.WriteLine("Key: {0} has value: {1}", key, items[key]);
}

Hope that helps, Tyler

Answer 3

Grauenwolf's way is the most straightforward and performant way of doing this with an array:

Either use a for loop or create a temp variable that you increment on each pass.

Which would of course look like this:

int[] values = { 5, 14, 29, 49, 99, 150, 999 };

for (int key = 0; key < values.Length; ++key)
  if (search <= values[key] && !stop)
  {
    // set key to a variable
  }

With .NET 3.5 you can take a more functional approach as well, but it is a little more verbose at the site, and would likely rely on a couple support functions for visiting the elements in an IEnumerable. Overkill if this is all you need it for, but handy if you tend to do a lot of collection processing.