Professional C# 7 and .NET Core 2.0, 7th Edition

11Special Collections

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Using bit arrays and bit vectors
• Using observable collections
• Using immutable collections
• Using concurrent collections

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

The Wrox.com code downloads for this chapter are found at http://www.wrox.com on the Download Code tab. The source code is also available at https://github.com/ProfessionalCSharp/ProfessionalCSharp7 in the directory SpecialCollections.

The code for this chapter is divided into the following major examples:

• BitArray Sample
• BitVector Sample
• Observable Collection Sample
• Immutable Collections Sample
• Pipeline Sample

OVERVIEW

Chapter 10, “Collections,” covers lists, queues, stacks, dictionaries, and linked lists. This chapter continues with special collections, such as collections for dealing with bits, collections that can be observed when changed, collections that cannot be changed, and collections that can be accessed from multiple threads simultaneously.

WORKING WITH BITS

If you need to deal with a number of bits, C# 7 has extensions like the binary literal and the number separator that are covered in Chapter 2, “Core C#,” and Chapter 6, “Operators and Casts.” When you work with binary data, you can also use the class BitArray and the struct BitVector32. BitArray is located in the namespace System.Collections, and BitVector32 is in the namespace System.Collections.Specialized. The most important difference between these two types is that BitArray is resizable—which ...