What is the difference between IEnumerator and IEnumerable?
IEnumerable
and IEnumerator
are both interfaces. IEnumerable
has just one method called GetEnumerator
. This method returns (as all methods return something including void) another type which is an interface and that interface is IEnumerator
. When you implement enumerator logic in any of your collection class, you implement IEnumerable
(either generic or non generic). IEnumerable
has just one method whereas IEnumerator
has 2 methods (MoveNext
and Reset
) and a property Current
. For easy understanding consider IEnumerable
as a box that contains IEnumerator
inside it (though not through inheritance or containment). See the code for better understanding:
class Test : IEnumerable, IEnumerator
{
IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()
{
throw new NotImplementedException();
}
public object Current
{
get { throw new NotImplementedException(); }
}
public bool MoveNext()
{
throw new NotImplementedException();
}
public void Reset()
{
throw new NotImplementedException();
}
}
An IEnumerator
is a thing that can enumerate: it has the Current
property and the MoveNext
and Reset
methods (which in .NET code you probably won't call explicitly, though you could).
An IEnumerable
is a thing that can be enumerated...which simply means that it has a GetEnumerator method that returns an IEnumerator
.
Which do you use? The only reason to use IEnumerator
is if you have something that has a nonstandard way of enumerating (that is, of returning its various elements one-by-one), and you need to define how that works. You'd create a new class implementing IEnumerator
. But you'd still need to return that IEnumerator
in an IEnumerable
class.
For a look at what an enumerator (implementing IEnumerator<T>
) looks like, see any Enumerator<T>
class, such as the ones contained in List<T>
, Queue<T>,
or Stack<T>
. For a look at a class implementing IEnumerable
, see any standard collection class.
An Enumerator
shows you the items in a list or collection.
Each instance of an Enumerator is at a certain position (the 1st element, the 7th element, etc) and can give you that element (IEnumerator.Current
) or move to the next one (IEnumerator.MoveNext
). When you write a foreach
loop in C#, the compiler generates code that uses an Enumerator.
An Enumerable
is a class that can give you Enumerator
s. It has a method called GetEnumerator
which gives you an Enumerator
that looks at its items. When you write a foreach
loop in C#, the code that it generates calls GetEnumerator
to create the Enumerator
used by the loop.
IEnumerable is an interface that defines one method GetEnumerator which returns an IEnumerator interface, this in turn allows readonly access to a collection. A collection that implements IEnumerable can be used with a foreach statement.
Definition
IEnumerable
public IEnumerator GetEnumerator();
IEnumerator
public object Current;
public void Reset();
public bool MoveNext();
example code from codebetter.com