Are there any collection classes or special data types that support more than 2 ^ 31 items in .NET 3.5?

Question

I am currently using VS 2008 64 bit edition, 3.5 framework with SP1. However, it appears that the collection classes like List have a limit of 2^31 (or max value of an int)

Answer 1

I am pretty sure there are no builtin collections that can handle more than Int32.MaxValue entries. The reason is because the .NET Framework still has ~2GB limit for objects even for the 64-bit version. Int32.MaxValue entries of one byte bumps up against this limit. I believe Mono's memory limit is larger, but I cannot definitely confirm that.

You can work around this limitation using the BigArray implemenation from here.