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Collections and Data Structures 

Closely related data can be handled more efficiently when grouped together into a collection. Instead of writing separate code to handle each individual object, you can use the same code to process all the elements of a collection.

To manage a collection, the Array class and the System.Collections classes are used to add, remove, and modify either individual elements of the collection or a range of elements. An entire collection can even be copied to another collection.

Some Collections classes have sorting capabilities, and most are indexed. Memory management is handled automatically, and the capacity of a collection is expanded as required. Synchronization provides thread safety when accessing members of the collection. Some Collections classes can generate wrappers that make the collection read-only or fixed-size. Any Collections class can generate its own enumerator that makes it easy to iterate through the elements.

In the .NET Framework version 2.0, generic collection classes provide new functionality and make it easy to create strongly typed collections. See the System.Collections.Generic and System.Collections.ObjectModel namespaces.

In This Section

  • Defining Collections
    Describes what collection types are, and some differences between generic and nongeneric collection types in the .NET Framework class library.

Reference

  • Array
    Describes the major features of the Array class, which provides methods for creating, manipulating, searching, and sorting arrays, thereby serving as the base class for all arrays in the common language runtime.
  • System.Collections
    Provides reference documentation for the System.Collections namespace, which contains interfaces and classes that define various collections of objects.
  • System.Collections.Generic
    Provides reference documentation for the System.Collections.Generic namespace, which contains interfaces and classes that define generic collections.
  • System.Collections.Specialized
    Provides reference documentation for the System.Collections.Specialized namespace, which contains specialized and strongly-typed collections.