After the pain of using the Find method in pre .Net ADO, I was just thinking of getting back into the water with Find in the generic lists, now you are ringing the shark alarm.

I agree, having the Find method looking like the various TryParse methods would be more intuitive and useful.

After the pain of using the Find method in pre .Net ADO, I was just thinking of getting back into the water with Find in the generic lists, now you are ringing the shark alarm.

I agree, having the Find method looking like the various TryParse methods would be more intuitive and useful.

The thing is, I want to find out if the item exists and get a reference to it. Having said that, this might not be such an issue for value types.

What we need is to determine if something is in a list and get a handle to it regardless of whether it is a value type or a reference type. Contains() doesn’t do that, and neither does FindIndex(), as you need to make further calls to get a handle.

I certainly wouldn’t be using a List<T> at all if I wanted performance across a large dataset, so you could say that I’m optimising unnecessarily. The point for me is that the Find() method is counter-intuitive if you haven’t read the documentation. It should be more indicative of what it’s doing for both value and reference types.

Cheers!

The thing is, I want to find out if the item exists and get a reference to it. Having said that, this might not be such an issue for value types.

What we need is to determine if something is in a list and get a handle to it regardless of whether it is a value type or a reference type. Contains() doesn’t do that, and neither does FindIndex(), as you need to make further calls to get a handle.

I certainly wouldn’t be using a List<T> at all if I wanted performance across a large dataset, so you could say that I’m optimising unnecessarily. The point for me is that the Find() method is counter-intuitive if you haven’t read the documentation. It should be more indicative of what it’s doing for both value and reference types.

Cheers!

However, if the list is long performance may be affected as the documentation notes that the method performs a linear search. Also, I do not know how efficient the method is if the list is not of a simple type.

However, if the list is long performance may be affected as the documentation notes that the method performs a linear search. Also, I do not know how efficient the method is if the list is not of a simple type.

It’s good to agree on using same therms, but this didn’t change the point – C# sucks, because it’s underlying (.NET) implementation of generic list sucks. It would be wrong if there was alternative implementation usable from C#. There isn’t one, right?

I think difference is big for .NET developer (i mean those guys who write the actual framework). For end user (developer who uses .NET framework)… Find()-ing item in list is just that tricky and hard to do right way as you wrote. It doesn’t matter, whether is it framework or language problem.

It’s good to agree on using same therms, but this didn’t change the point – C# sucks, because it’s underlying (.NET) implementation of generic list sucks. It would be wrong if there was alternative implementation usable from C#. There isn’t one, right?

I think difference is big for .NET developer (i mean those guys who write the actual framework). For end user (developer who uses .NET framework)… Find()-ing item in list is just that tricky and hard to do right way as you wrote. It doesn’t matter, whether is it framework or language problem.