What is the best way to modify a list in a 'foreach' loop?

Solution 1:

The collection used in foreach is immutable. This is very much by design.

As it says on MSDN:

The foreach statement is used to iterate through the collection to get the information that you want, but can not be used to add or remove items from the source collection to avoid unpredictable side effects. If you need to add or remove items from the source collection, use a for loop.

The post in the link provided by Poko indicates that this is allowed in the new concurrent collections.

Solution 2:

Make a copy of the enumeration, using an IEnumerable extension method in this case, and enumerate over it. This would add a copy of every element in every inner enumerable to that enumeration.

foreach(var item in Enumerable)
{
    foreach(var item2 in item.Enumerable.ToList())
    {
        item.Add(item2)
    }
}

Solution 3:

To illustrate Nippysaurus's answer: If you are going to add the new items to the list and want to process the newly added items too during the same enumeration then you can just use for loop instead of foreach loop, problem solved :)

var list = new List<YourData>();
... populate the list ...

//foreach (var entryToProcess in list)
for (int i = 0; i < list.Count; i++)
{
    var entryToProcess = list[i];

    var resultOfProcessing = DoStuffToEntry(entryToProcess);

    if (... condition ...)
        list.Add(new YourData(...));
}

For runnable example:

void Main()
{
    var list = new List<int>();
    for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
        list.Add(i);

    //foreach (var entry in list)
    for (int i = 0; i < list.Count; i++)
    {
        var entry = list[i];
        if (entry % 2 == 0)
            list.Add(entry + 1);

        Console.Write(entry + ", ");
    }

    Console.Write(list);
}

Output of last example:

0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9,

List (15 items)
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
1
3
5
7
9

Solution 4:

As mentioned, but with a code sample:

foreach(var item in collection.ToArray())
    collection.Add(new Item...);

Solution 5:

You can't change the enumerable collection while it is being enumerated, so you will have to make your changes before or after enumerating.

The for loop is a nice alternative, but if your IEnumerable collection does not implement ICollection, it is not possible.

Either:

1) Copy collection first. Enumerate the copied collection and change the original collection during the enumeration. (@tvanfosson)

2) Keep a list of changes and commit them after the enumeration.