Foreach loop, determine which is the last iteration of the loop

If you just need to do something with the last element (as opposed to something different with the last element then using LINQ will help here:

Item last = Model.Results.Last();
// do something with last

If you need to do something different with the last element then you'd need something like:

Item last = Model.Results.Last();
foreach (Item result in Model.Results)
{
    // do something with each item
    if (result.Equals(last))
    {
        // do something different with the last item
    }
    else
    {
        // do something different with every item but the last
    }
}

Though you'd probably need to write a custom comparer to ensure that you could tell that the item was the same as the item returned by Last().

This approach should be used with caution as Last may well have to iterate through the collection. While this might not be a problem for small collections, if it gets large it could have performance implications. It will also fail if the list contains duplicate items. In this cases something like this may be more appropriate:

int totalCount = result.Count();
for (int count = 0; count < totalCount; count++)
{
    Item result = Model.Results[count];

    // do something with each item
    if ((count + 1) == totalCount)
    {
        // do something different with the last item
    }
    else
    {
        // do something different with every item but the last
    }
}

How about a good old fashioned for loop?

for (int i = 0; i < Model.Results.Count; i++) {

     if (i == Model.Results.Count - 1) {
           // this is the last item
     }
}

Or using Linq and the foreach:

foreach (Item result in Model.Results)   
{   
     if (Model.Results.IndexOf(result) == Model.Results.Count - 1) {
             // this is the last item
     }
}

Using Last() on certain types will loop thru the entire collection!
Meaning that if you make a foreach and call Last(), you looped twice! which I'm sure you'd like to avoid in big collections.

Then the solution is to use a do while loop:

using var enumerator = collection.GetEnumerator();

var last = !enumerator.MoveNext();
T current;

while (!last)
{
  current = enumerator.Current;        

  //process item

  last = !enumerator.MoveNext();        
  if(last)
  {
    //additional processing for last item
  }
}

So unless the collection type is of type IList<T> the Last() function will iterate thru all collection elements.

Test

If your collection provides random access (e.g. implements IList<T>), you can also check your item as follows.

if(collection is IList<T> list)
  return collection[^1]; //replace with collection.Count -1 in pre-C#8 apps

As Chris shows, Linq will work; just use Last() to get a reference to the last one in the enumerable, and as long as you aren't working with that reference then do your normal code, but if you ARE working with that reference then do your extra thing. Its downside is that it will always be O(N)-complexity.

You can instead use Count() (which is O(1) if the IEnumerable is also an ICollection; this is true for most of the common built-in IEnumerables), and hybrid your foreach with a counter:

var i=0;
var count = Model.Results.Count();
foreach (Item result in Model.Results)
{
    if (++i == count) //this is the last item
}

Foreach loop, determine which is the last iteration of the loop

Related

Recent Posts