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Why is there no ForEach extension method on IEnumerable?

Asked 2008-09-19T11:49:53.773
489

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?

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You could use the (chainable, but lazily evaluated) Select, first doing your operation, and then returning identity (or something else if you prefer)

IEnumerable<string> people = new List<string>(){"alica", "bob", "john", "pete"};
people.Select(p => { Console.WriteLine(p); return p; });

You will need to make sure it is still evaluated, either with Count() (the cheapest operation to enumerate afaik) or another operation you needed anyway.

I would love to see it brought in to the standard library though:

static IEnumerable<T> WithLazySideEffect(this IEnumerable<T> src, Action<T> action) {
  return src.Select(i => { action(i); return i; } );
}

The above code then becomes people.WithLazySideEffect(p => Console.WriteLine(p)) which is effectively equivalent to foreach, but lazy and chainable.

answered 2013-02-21T08:25:16.763

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