In my previous post, I talked about .NET 3.5 Extension Methods and ended by mentioning Ruby Blocks - because they are much admired. As one example in Ruby, one might output the sum of an array of numbers as follows ...
list = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
sum = 0
list.each() {|i| sum = sum + i}
puts sum
What is now possible in .NET 3.5? Well, one could write the following C# code ...
int[] list = {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10};
var sum = 0;
list.Each(i => sum += i);
sum.Print(); // an extension method from my previous post
How is the "Each" method above implemented? As an Extension method as follows ...
public static void Each<T>(this IEnumerable<T> items, Action<T> action) {
foreach (var item in items)
{
action(item);
}
}
One could use this Extension Method to apply any statement against each item in a collection. For example, I could now output each item to the console with the following statement ...
list.Each(i => i.Print());
For me, this is a slightly better syntax in this circumstance than the built in Array.ForEach<T> method which also takes an Action<T> as a parameter.
In other words, I prefer writing list.Each(i => sum += i); instead of Array.ForEach(sports, i => sum += i);