Why is there no ForEach extension method on IEnumerable?

Inspired by another question asking about the missing Zip function:

Why is there no ForEach extension method on the IEnumerable interface? Or anywhere? The only class that gets a ForEach method is List<>. Is there a reason why it's missing, maybe performance?

Solution 1:

There is already a foreach statement included in the language that does the job most of the time.

I'd hate to see the following:

list.ForEach( item =>
{
    item.DoSomething();
} );

Instead of:

foreach(Item item in list)
{
     item.DoSomething();
}

The latter is clearer and easier to read in most situations, although maybe a bit longer to type.

However, I must admit I changed my stance on that issue; a ForEach() extension method would indeed be useful in some situations.

Here are the major differences between the statement and the method:

Type checking: foreach is done at runtime, ForEach() is at compile time (Big Plus!)
The syntax to call a delegate is indeed much simpler: objects.ForEach(DoSomething);
ForEach() could be chained: although evilness/usefulness of such a feature is open to discussion.

Those are all great points made by many people here and I can see why people are missing the function. I wouldn't mind Microsoft adding a standard ForEach method in the next framework iteration.

Solution 2:

ForEach method was added before LINQ. If you add ForEach extension, it will never be called for List instances because of extension methods constraints. I think the reason it was not added is to not interference with existing one.

However, if you really miss this little nice function, you can roll out your own version

public static void ForEach<T>(
    this IEnumerable<T> source,
    Action<T> action)
{
    foreach (T element in source) 
        action(element);
}

Solution 3:

You could write this extension method:

// Possibly call this "Do"
IEnumerable<T> Apply<T> (this IEnumerable<T> source, Action<T> action)
{
    foreach (var e in source)
    {
        action(e);
        yield return e;
    }
}

Pros

Allows chaining:

MySequence
    .Apply(...)
    .Apply(...)
    .Apply(...);

Cons

It won't actually do anything until you do something to force iteration. For that reason, it shouldn't be called .ForEach(). You could write .ToList() at the end, or you could write this extension method, too:

// possibly call this "Realize"
IEnumerable<T> Done<T> (this IEnumerable<T> source)
{
    foreach (var e in source)
    {
        // do nothing
        ;
    }

    return source;
}

This may be too significant a departure from the shipping C# libraries; readers who are not familiar with your extension methods won't know what to make of your code.

Why is there no ForEach extension method on IEnumerable?

Solution 1:

Solution 2:

Solution 3:

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