Re: Array vs List<>

Why not just expose it as an IEnumerable<T> that saves the copy and  
keeps the list ( but not it's members) immutable

Rich

Sent from my iPhone

On 1 Nov 2008, at 13:00, Simon Robinson <[email protected]> wrote:

> Very minor issue that occurred to me.
>
> The project I'm working on seems to have quite a few lists of  
> objects, where each list is read in from a file when the application  
> starts, and is subsequently guaranteed never to change; the data  
> will be accessed constantly but neither the list nor the values of  
> the objects in it will ever be modified.
>
> Because I don't know how many elements are going to be in the list  
> until I've read them in, I tend to read them into a List<>, so I can  
> dynamically expand it as I'm reading the elements in. However,  
> because the list is then unchanged, there's no reason for it to be a  
> dynamically expandable list. If it wasn't for the initialization  
> process I'd just store them in a fixed-length array.
>
> So I'm curious, what are people's thoughts on keeping the data  
> permanently in a list<>, or discarding the list<> and copying to an  
> array as soon as the data is read in? An array entails the extra  
> copy operation, but may lead to slightly clearer code. I'm guessing  
> for subsequent read access, there's no performance difference. Any  
> other factors I've missed?
>
> I realise this is most likely a pretty academic point that would  
> have very little impact on the app either way, but I was curious...
>
> ===================================
> View archives and manage your subscription(s) at http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives

===================================
View archives and manage your subscription(s) at http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives