LINQ Pocket Reference

Conversion Methods

LINQ deals primarily in sequences; in other words, collections of type IEnumerable<T>. The conversion methods convert to and from, other types of collections:

Method	Description
OfType	Converts IEnumerable to IEnumerable<T>, discarding wrongly typed elements
Cast	Converts IEnumerable to IEnumerable<T>, throwing an exception if there are any wrongly typed elements
ToArray	Converts IEnumerable<T> to T[]
ToList	Converts IEnumerable<T> to List<T>
ToDictionary	Converts IEnumerable<T> to Dictionary<TKey,TValue>
ToLookup	Converts IEnumerable<T> to ILookup<TKey,TElement>
AsEnumerable	Downcasts to IEnumerable<T>
AsQueryable	Casts or converts to IQueryable<T>

OfType and Cast

OfType and Cast accept a nongeneric IEnumerable collection and emit a generic IEnumerable<T> sequence that you can subsequently query:

	// ArrayList is defined in System.Collections
	ArrayList classicList = new ArrayList();
	classicList.AddRange ( new int[] { 3, 4,5 } );
	IEnumerable<int> sequence1 =classicList.Cast<int>();

Cast and OfType differ in their behavior when encountering an input element that’s of an incompatible type. Cast throws an exception; OfType ignores the incompatible element. Continuing the preceding example:

	DateTime offender = DateTime.Now;
	classicList.Add (offender);

	IEnumerable<int> sequence2 = classicList
	  .OfType<int>();     // OK - Ignoresoffending DateTime

	IEnumerable<int> sequence3 = classicList
	  .Cast<int>();       // Throws exception

The rules for element compatibility exactly follow those ...