Question

I have just noticed that a multidimensional array in C# does not implement IEnumerable<T>, while it does implement IEnumerable. For single-dimensional arrays, both IEnumerable<T> and IEnumerable are implemented.

Why this difference? If a multi-dimensional array is IEnumerable, surely it should also implement the generic version? I noticed this because I tried to use an extension method on a multidimensional array, which fails unless you use Cast<T> or similar; so I can definitely see the an argument for making multidimensional arrays implement IEnumerable<T>.

To clarify my question in code, I would expect the following code to print true four times, while it actually prints true, false, true, true:

int[] singleDimensionArray = new int[10]; int[,] multiDimensional = new int[10, 10];  Debug.WriteLine(singleDimensionArray is IEnumerable<int>); Debug.WriteLine(multiDimensional is IEnumerable<int>); Debug.WriteLine(singleDimensionArray is IEnumerable); Debug.WriteLine(multiDimensional is IEnumerable); 

Answer 1

The CLR has two different kinds of arrays: vectors which are guaranteed to be one-dimensional with a lower bound of 0, and more general arrays which can have non-zero bounds and a rank other than 0.

From section 8.9.1 of the CLI spec:

Additionally, a created vector with element type T, implements the interface System.Collections.Generic.IList<U> (§8.7), where U := T.

I have to say it seems pretty weird to me. Given that it already implements IEnumerable I don’t see why it shouldn’t implement IEnumerable<T>. It wouldn’t make as much sense to implement IList<T>, but the simple generic interface would be fine.

If you want this, you could either call Cast<T> (if you’re using .NET 3.5) or write your own method to iterate through the array. To avoid casting you’d have to write your own method which found the lower/upper bounds of each dimension, and fetched things that way. Not terribly pleasant.