Question

In C#, I have noticed that if I am running a foreach loop on a LINQ generated IEnumerable<T> collection and try to modify the contents of each T element, my modifications are not persistent.

On the other hand, if I apply the ToArray() or ToList() method when creating my collection, modification of the individual elements in the foreach loop are persistent.

I suspect that this is in some way related to deferred execution, but exactly how is not entirely obvious to me. I would really appreciate an explanation to this difference in behavior.

Here is some example code – I have a class MyClass with a constructor and auto-implemented property:

public class MyClass
{
    public MyClass(int val) { Str = val.ToString(); }
    public string Str { get; set; }
}

In my example application I use LINQ Select() to create two collections of MyClass objects based on a collection of integers, one IEnumerable<MyClass>, and one IList<MyClass> by applying the ToList() method in the end.

var ints = Enumerable.Range(1, 10);
var myClassEnumerable = ints.Select(i => new MyClass(i));
var myClassArray = ints.Select(i => new MyClass(i)).ToList();

Next, I run a foreach loop over each of the collections, and modify the contents of the looped-over MyClass objects:

foreach (var obj in myClassEnumerable) obj.Str = "Something";
foreach (var obj in myClassArray) obj.Str = "Something else";

Finally, I output the Str member of the first element in each collection:

Console.WriteLine(myClassEnumerable.First().Str);
Console.WriteLine(myClassArray.First().Str);

Somewhat counter-intuitively, the output is:

1
Something else

Answer 1

Deferred execution is the indeed the key point.

Executing myClassEnumerable.First().Str will reexecute your query ints.Select(i => new MyClass(i)); and so it will give you a new IEnumerable with a new list of integers.

You can see this in action using your debugger. Put a breakpoint at the new MyClass(i) part of the IEnumerable select and you will see that this part get’s hit again when you execute it for Console.WriteLine