Shortcut for creating single item list in C#

In C#, is there an inline shortcut to instantiate a List<T> with only one item.

I'm currently doing:

new List<string>( new string[] { "title" } ))

Having this code everywhere reduces readability. I've thought of using a utility method like this:

public static List<T> SingleItemList<T>( T value )
{
    return (new List<T>( new T[] { value } ));
}

So I could do:

SingleItemList("title");

Is there a shorter / cleaner way?

Thanks.

Simply use this:

List<string> list = new List<string>() { "single value" };

You can even omit the () braces:

List<string> list = new List<string> { "single value" };

Update: of course this also works for more than one entry:

List<string> list = new List<string> { "value1", "value2", ... };

var list = new List<string>(1) { "hello" };

Very similar to what others have posted, except that it makes sure to only allocate space for the single item initially.

Of course, if you know you'll be adding a bunch of stuff later it may not be a good idea, but still worth mentioning once.

Michael's idea of using extension methods leads to something even simpler:

public static List<T> InList<T>(this T item)
{
    return new List<T> { item };
}

So you could do this:

List<string> foo = "Hello".InList();

I'm not sure whether I like it or not, mind you...

A different answer to my earlier one, based on exposure to the Google Java Collections:

public static class Lists
{
    public static List<T> Of<T>(T item)
    {
        return new List<T> { item };
    }
}

Then:

List<string> x = Lists.Of("Hello");

I advise checking out the GJC - it's got lots of interesting stuff in. (Personally I'd ignore the "alpha" tag - it's only the open source version which is "alpha" and it's based on a very stable and heavily used internal API.)

Shortcut for creating single item list in C#

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