Question

Is there shorter/nicer way to read input in console as enumerable using standard features of C#/.Net 4.0? I don’t think there is any practical usage of it, more as excercise.

This is what I quickly come up as an answer to homework question about “read array/filter it“. Basically I tried to write console equialent of File.ReadAllLines.

var completeConsoleInput = Enumerable.Repeat(0, int.MaxValue)
   .Select(i => Console.ReadLine()) 
   .TakeWhile(s => s != null);

I especially don’t like Enumerable.Repeat(0, int.MaxValue) that I tried to use as “forever” iterator, but I don’t remember seeing other option.

Answer 1

Here is a solution :

public static IEnumerable<string> ReadLines()
{
  string line;
  while(null != (line = Console.ReadLine()))
    yield return line;
}

public static void Main()
{
  string input = string.Join(ReadLines(), Environment.NewLine);
}