Given a collection, I need to iterate through all the elements three (or some other amount) at a time. For example:
string[] exampleData = {"John", "Doe", "1.1.1990", "Jane", "Roe", "2.2.1980"}
for(int i = 0; i < exampleData.Length; i += 3) {
CreateUser(foreName: exampleData[i], surName: exampleData[i+1], dateOfBirth: exampleData[i+2]);
}
How could I efficiently reproduce this if exampleData was an IEnumerable instead of an array?
You can use the LINQ Chunk extension method:
foreach (string[] chunk in exampleData.Chunk(3))
{
CreateUser(foreName: chunk[0], surName: chunk[1], dateOfBirth: chunk[2]);
}
You can write your own extension method:
public static IEnumerable<IList<T>> ChunksOf<T>(this IEnumerable<T> sequence, int size)
{
List<T> chunk = new List<T>(size);
foreach (T element in sequence)
{
chunk.Add(element);
if (chunk.Count == size)
{
yield return chunk;
chunk = new List<T>(size);
}
}
}
Call it like this:
foreach (IList<string> chunk in exampleData.ChunksOf(3))
{
CreateUser(foreName: chunk[0], surName: chunk[1], dateOfBirth: chunk[2]);
}
Note that if sequence.Count()
is not an integer multiple of size
, then ChunksOf
discards the last partial chunk. If instead you wanted to return a partial chunk, you could add to the end: if (chunk.Count > 0) yield return chunk;
.