I was tapping out a quick for-fun project where I wanted to iterate through all the letters in the alphabet.<\/p>\n
[sourcecode language=”csharp”]
\n\/\/other logic
\nforeach(char letter in \/\/hmm…
\n[\/sourcecode]<\/p>\n
I didn’t really want to manually initialize an array So I began to think about how to accomplish this in C#. The “Okay,” I mused, “I can build on that easily!” [sourcecode language=”csharp”] Check it out, it works great, what a clever programmer I am!<\/p>\n [sourcecode language=”csharp”] \u00a0<\/p>\n And now, the moral of the story: In C#, the [sourcecode language=”csharp”] \u00a0<\/p>\nnew char[]{\"A\", \"B\", \"C\"<\/code> and I recalled how other languages have shortcuts for building lists, like [\"A\"..\"Z\"]<\/code>. It’s called “List Comprehension” and it’s available in a lot of cool languages<\/a>.<\/p>\n..<\/code> syntax obviously didn’t work. Googling the topic<\/a> brought me to Wikipedia<\/a>, which lists a couple of examples using Enumerable.Range<\/code>.<\/p>\nEnumerable.Range(65, 26)<\/code> will be the starting point since “A” is ASCII 65, and there are 26 letters in the alphabet. If I can just convert each one of these to a char<\/code>, I’m golden. The function I found was ConvertAll<\/code>, but that’s a LINQ extension method for the List<T><\/code> type. No problem, all I need is Enumerable.Range(65, 26).ToList().ConvertAll<\/code>. It’s simple to convert an int<\/code> to its char<\/code> by casting, so my implementation of List Comprehension in C# for the alphabet was<\/p>\n
\nEnumerable.Range(65, 26).ToList().ConvertAll(delegate(int value) { return (char)value; })
\n[\/sourcecode]\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nforeach(char letter in Enumerable.Range(65, 26).ToList().ConvertAll(delegate(int value) { return (char)value; }))
\n{
\n\/\/breakpoint here to confirm
\n}
\n[\/sourcecode]<\/p>\nString<\/code> class implements IEnumerable<char><\/code>. Which means that all I needed to do was write:<\/p>\n
\nforeach(char letter in “ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ”)
\n{
\n\/\/how about that
\n}
\n[\/sourcecode]
\nIt’s so much simpler, shorter, and it’s instantly understandable. Learn from me, don’t be an overengineer!<\/p>\n