Why does List<T> implement IList<T>, ICollection<T> and IEnumerable<T>?
Yes, it makes no difference in this case. In some cases it can make a difference, if you're using a base class which already implements an interface but you wish to reimplement it yourself explicitly - but in this case there's no base class (other than the implicit object
) and it would have behaved exactly the same way.
Contrary to my recollections, I don't believe there's a difference in the way the class is represented in metadata whether the code explicitly declares all the interfaces or not. Here's an example:
interface IFoo {}
interface IBar : IFoo {}
class FooBar1 : IBar {}
class FooBar2 : IBar, IFoo {}
Both ildasm and Reflector show the same information for FooBar1
and FooBar2
... it shows both of them implementing IBar
and IFoo
.
In other words, we can't tell whether the original source code for List<T>
actually specifies all the interfaces or not. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't - but it doesn't matter either way.
EDIT: For completeness, I also checked the cases where you're extending two interfaces with another interface. I can't find a difference in the metadata in that case, either. I'm sure I remember some situation in which it was evident, but I can't find it now.
Yes it would. IList<T>
itself implements the other two.
The object browser shows you all the interfaces the class implements, whether directly (IList<T>
) or indirectly (ICollection<T>
, IEnumerable<T>
, through IList<T>
).
That's not the way it was actually coded behind the scenes. That's just what tools like Reflector show you when it turns the IL back into C#.