Question

Inspired by another question asking about the missing Zip function:

Why is there no ForEach extension method on the IEnumerable interface? Or anywhere? The only class that gets a ForEach method is List<>. Is there a reason why it’s missing, maybe performance?

Answer 1

There is already a foreach statement included in the language that does the job most of the time.

I’d hate to see the following:

list.ForEach( item => {     item.DoSomething(); } ); 

Instead of:

foreach(Item item in list) {      item.DoSomething(); } 

The latter is clearer and easier to read in most situations, although maybe a bit longer to type.

However, I must admit I changed my stance on that issue; a ForEach() extension method would indeed be useful in some situations.

Here are the major differences between the statement and the method:

• Type checking: foreach is done at runtime, ForEach() is at compile time (Big Plus!)
• The syntax to call a delegate is indeed much simpler: objects.ForEach(DoSomething);
• ForEach() could be chained: although evilness/usefulness of such a feature is open to discussion.

Those are all great points made by many people here and I can see why people are missing the function. I wouldn’t mind Microsoft adding a standard ForEach method in the next framework iteration.