Question

I noticed this function in a .NET project I am working on.

    private static void RemoveAllElements(ref List<int> listToBeRemoved)
    {
        foreach (var i in listToBeRemoved)
        {
            listToBeRemoved.Remove(i);
        }
    }

Is this the quickest way to remove all elements from a list? I also noticed this function doesn’t catch any exceptions. Should I change this? This is in existing code.

Answer 1

I don’t see why you couldn’t just simplify it to

listToBeRemoved.Clear();

You can see the MSDN Documentation for further details.

I don’t think you need to add any exception handling logic. The Clear method internally uses Array.Clear, which as a reliability contract of Success and WillNotCorruptState. I couldn’t imagine how that would throw an exception.