AddRange to a Collection

Question

A coworker asked me today how to add a range to a collection. He has a class that inherits from Collection. There\'s a get-only property of that type t

Answer 1

No, this seems perfectly reasonable. There is a List<T>.AddRange() method that basically does just this, but requires your collection to be a concrete List<T>.

Answer 2

Here is a bit more advanced/production-ready version:

    public static class CollectionExtensions
    {
        public static TCol AddRange<TCol, TItem>(this TCol destination, IEnumerable<TItem> source)
            where TCol : ICollection<TItem>
        {
            if(destination == null) throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(destination));
            if(source == null) throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(source));

            // don't cast to IList to prevent recursion
            if (destination is List<TItem> list)
            {
                list.AddRange(source);
                return destination;
            }

            foreach (var item in source)
            {
                destination.Add(item);
            }

            return destination;
        }
    }

Answer 3

You could add your IEnumerable range to a list then set the ICollection = to the list.

        IEnumerable<T> source;

        List<item> list = new List<item>();
        list.AddRange(source);

        ICollection<item> destination = list;

Answer 4

Or you can just make an ICollection extension like this:

 public static ICollection<T> AddRange<T>(this ICollection<T> @this, IEnumerable<T> items)
    {
        foreach(var item in items)
        {
            @this.Add(item);
        }

        return @this;
    }

Using it would be just like using it on a list:

collectionA.AddRange(IEnumerable<object> items);

Answer 5

Since .NET4.5 if you want one-liner you can use System.Collections.Generic ForEach.

source.ForEach(o => destination.Add(o));

or even shorter as

source.ForEach(destination.Add);

Performance-wise it's the same as for each loop (syntactic sugar).

Also don't try assigning it like

var x = source.ForEach(destination.Add) 

cause ForEach is void.

Edit: Copied from comments, Lipert's opinion on ForEach

Answer 6

The C5 Generic Collections Library classes all support the AddRange method. C5 has a much more robust interface that actually exposes all of the features of its underlying implementations and is interface-compatible with the System.Collections.Generic ICollection and IList interfaces, meaning that C5's collections can be easily substituted as the underlying implementation.