Chapter 5. System.Collections
The System.Collections
namespace provides basic functionality
for collections of objects. It defines
interfaces, base classes, and implementations for
collections such as dictionaries, sorted lists,
queues, and stacks. The base classes can also be extended
to create specialized collection types.
However, the System.Collections.Specialized
namespace contains a set of extended collection
types based on this namespace, so check there before creating your own types.
Figure 5-1 and Figure 5-2 show the types in this namespace.
On first observation, the design of these collections seems somewhat
awkward — for example, why does a “list” seem to be broken into two
pieces: the IList
interface and
the ArrayList
implementation? On top of
this, the namespace defines a number of other interfaces, such as IEnumerable
and IEnumerator
, that
seem unnecessary.
In fact, the design of the collection types in this namespace is quite similar
to the designs of other container libraries such as the STL (Standard Template
Library) in C++ and the Java Collections library in JDK 1.2. By separating the
interface of a collection type (the concept of “list-ness” or “dictionary-ness”)
from the actual implementation, you are free to assume only the absolute
minimum about the actual implementation used, and instead focus only on what is
needed in order to carry out the work. For example,
VB.NET’s For Each
construct works by silently using the IEnumerable
interface to obtain an ...
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