What is the difference between IEnumerator and IEnumerable? [duplicate]

Question

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Can anyone explain IEnumerable and IEnumerator to me?

What are the differences between IEnumerator and IEnumerable?

Answer 1

IEnumerable is an interface that defines one method GetEnumerator which returns an IEnumerator interface, this in turn allows readonly access to a collection. A collection that implements IEnumerable can be used with a foreach statement.

Definition

IEnumerable 

public IEnumerator GetEnumerator();

IEnumerator

public object Current;
public void Reset();
public bool MoveNext();

example code from codebetter.com

Answer 2

An IEnumerator is a thing that can enumerate: it has the Current property and the MoveNext and Reset methods (which in .NET code you probably won't call explicitly, though you could).

An IEnumerable is a thing that can be enumerated...which simply means that it has a GetEnumerator method that returns an IEnumerator.

Which do you use? The only reason to use IEnumerator is if you have something that has a nonstandard way of enumerating (that is, of returning its various elements one-by-one), and you need to define how that works. You'd create a new class implementing IEnumerator. But you'd still need to return that IEnumerator in an IEnumerable class.

For a look at what an enumerator (implementing IEnumerator<T>) looks like, see any Enumerator<T> class, such as the ones contained in List<T>, Queue<T>, or Stack<T>. For a look at a class implementing IEnumerable, see any standard collection class.

Answer 3

An Enumerator shows you the items in a list or collection. Each instance of an Enumerator is at a certain position (the 1st element, the 7th element, etc) and can give you that element (IEnumerator.Current) or move to the next one (IEnumerator.MoveNext). When you write a foreach loop in C#, the compiler generates code that uses an Enumerator.

An Enumerable is a class that can give you Enumerators. It has a method called GetEnumerator which gives you an Enumerator that looks at its items. When you write a foreach loop in C#, the code that it generates calls GetEnumerator to create the Enumerator used by the loop.

Answer 4

IEnumerable and IEnumerator are both interfaces. IEnumerable has just one method called GetEnumerator. This method returns (as all methods return something including void) another type which is an interface and that interface is IEnumerator. When you implement enumerator logic in any of your collection class, you implement IEnumerable (either generic or non generic). IEnumerable has just one method whereas IEnumerator has 2 methods (MoveNext and Reset) and a property Current. For easy understanding consider IEnumerable as a box that contains IEnumerator inside it (though not through inheritance or containment). See the code for better understanding:

class Test : IEnumerable, IEnumerator
{
    IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()
    {
        throw new NotImplementedException();
    }

    public object Current
    {
        get { throw new NotImplementedException(); }
    }

    public bool MoveNext()
    {
        throw new NotImplementedException();
    }

    public void Reset()
    {
        throw new NotImplementedException();
    }
}