Question

From MSDN, I got an example as follows:

IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()
{
   return (IEnumerator) GetEnumerator();
}

public PeopleEnum GetEnumerator()
{
    return new PeopleEnum(_people);
}

Why did the author do like this? Is it a best practice?

——–EDIT———

MSDN article link : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.collections.ienumerable.aspx

Why didn’t the author do as follows:

 IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()
 {
        return new PeopleEnum(_people);
 }

I tried, it still works.

======= SECOND EDIT ==========

using System;
using System.Collections;

namespace MyEnumerableEnumerator
{
    class Person
    {
        public Person(string name, int age)
        {
            Name = name;
            Age = age;
        }

        public string Name { get; set; }
        public int Age { get; set; }
    }

    class PeopleEnumerator : IEnumerator
    {
        int Position { get; set; }
        Person[] People { get; set; }
        int Length { get; set; }

        public PeopleEnumerator(Person[] people)
        {
            People = people;
            Position = -1;
            Length = people.Length;
        }

        public bool MoveNext()
        {
            Position++;
            return Position < Length;
        }

        public void Reset()
        {
            Position = -1;
        }

        public object Current
        {
            get
            {
                try
                {
                    return People[Position];
                }
                catch (IndexOutOfRangeException)
                {
                    throw new InvalidOperationException();
                }
            }
        }
    }

    class People : IEnumerable
    {
        Person[] Persons { get; set; }

        public People(Person[] people)
        {
            Persons = new Person[people.Length];

            for (int x = 0; x < people.Length; x++)
                Persons[x] = people[x];
        }

        //public IEnumerator GetEnumerator()
        //{
        //    return new PeopleEnumerator(Persons);
        //}

        IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()
        {
            return GetEnumerator();
        }

        private IEnumerator GetEnumerator()
        {
            return new PeopleEnumerator(Persons);
        }
    }
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {

            Person[] persons = { new Person("Mark", 1), new Person("Siva", 2) };

            People people = new People(persons);

            foreach (Person person in people)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("Name: {0}, Age: {1}", person.Name, person.Age);
            }

        }
    }
}

Answer 1

They did as they did because they wanted a typed iterator for a non-generic collection.

Edit

foreach works since the compiler does some “magic”

Try this with your changed code:

        var enumerator = peopleList.GetEnumerator();
        while (enumerator.MoveNext())
            Console.WriteLine(enumerator.Current.firstName); //compile error.

It will not compile, you have to cast the enumerator to PeopleEnum or change back the return type.

Edit 2

You can read about foreach’s implicit type casting here:

http://www.dev102.com/2009/07/28/pay-attention-to-the-foreach-implicit-casting/

http://csharpindepth.com/ViewNote.aspx?NoteID=1

And in the specification: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb308966.aspx

Scroll down to last section in 26.1