What part of the C# language is .ForEach()?

Question

If I'm explaining the following ForEach feature to someone, is it accurate to say that #2 is the "LINQ foreach approach" or is it simply a "List<T> extension method" that is not officially associated with LINQ?

var youngCustomers = from c in customers
                     where c.Age < 30
                     select c;

//1. traditional foreach approach
foreach (var c in youngCustomers)
{
    Console.WriteLine(c.Display());
}

//2. LINQ foreach approach?
youngCustomers.ToList().ForEach(c => Console.WriteLine(c.Display()));

Answer 1

it is a normal method of List<T> though people often provide their own extension methods for other IEnumerable<T>. LINQ does not provide a ForEach extension due to its design goals of being functional/ working with immutable types, ForEach is an inherently side effect/imperative operation.

Answer 2

It has nothing to do with LINQ and it's not an extension method.

ForEach is a plain instance method on the List<T> class.

(And if you wanted to be really nitpicky, then ForEach is not part of the C# language at all: it's part of the .NET Base Class Library.)

Answer 3

It is not an extension method of List<T>, it is a regular method of List<T>.

So it has nothing to do with LINQ. If it had, the distinction between "officially associated with LINQ" and not officially associated with LINQ is not practically a very useful one. LINQ is simply a bunch of chained extension methods (often on IEnumerable<T>). There is rarely any point in distinguishing it from other extension methods on IEnumerable<T>. The best distinction would be that they reside in one of the System.Linq or System.Something.Linq namespaces.

Answer 4

It's not LINQ. One of the design aspects of LINQ is that the standard LINQ methods do not have side-effects. The ForEach method would violate this.

Eric Lippert has a blog article all about this:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2009/05/18/foreach-vs-foreach.aspx

Answer 5

youngCustomers.ToList().ForEach(c => Console.WriteLine(c.Display())); 

Let's break it down:

• ToList is a call to System.Linq.Enumerable.ToList() introduced in .net framework 3.5
• ForEach is a call to System.Collections.Generic.List<T>.ForEach introduced in .net framework 2.0
• c => is lambda expression syntax introduced in c# 3.0.

If you look at the documentation for List<T>.ForEach, you can see the old delegate syntax that was required back then to call it.

Answer 6

Side-effecting foreach will be ( is ) provided in Visual Studio 2010's Linq extensions.