How to take all but the last element in a sequence

Question

Let's say I have a sequence.

IEnumerable<int> sequence = GetSequenceFromExpensiveSource();
// sequence now contains: 0,1,2,3,...,999999,1000000

Getting the sequence is not cheap and is dynamically generated, and I want to iterate through it once only.

I want to get 0 - 999999 (i.e. everything but the last element)

I recognize that I could do something like:

sequence.Take(sequence.Count() - 1);

but that results in two enumerations over the big sequence.

Is there a LINQ construct that lets me do:

sequence.TakeAllButTheLastElement();

Answer 1

If you can get the Count or Length of an enumerable, which in most cases you can, then just Take(n - 1)

Example with arrays

int[] arr = new int[] { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 };
int[] sub = arr.Take(arr.Length - 1).ToArray();

Example with IEnumerable<T>

IEnumerable<int> enu = Enumerable.Range(1, 100);
IEnumerable<int> sub = enu.Take(enu.Count() - 1);

Answer 2

    public static IEnumerable<T> NoLast<T> (this IEnumerable<T> items) {
        if (items != null) {
            var e = items.GetEnumerator();
            if (e.MoveNext ()) {
                T head = e.Current;
                while (e.MoveNext ()) {
                    yield return head; ;
                    head = e.Current;
                }
            }
        }
    }

Answer 3

A slight variation on the accepted answer, which (for my tastes) is a bit simpler:

    public static IEnumerable<T> AllButLast<T>(this IEnumerable<T> enumerable, int n = 1)
    {
        // for efficiency, handle degenerate n == 0 case separately 
        if (n == 0)
        {
            foreach (var item in enumerable)
                yield return item;
            yield break;
        }

        var queue = new Queue<T>(n);
        foreach (var item in enumerable)
        {
            if (queue.Count == n)
                yield return queue.Dequeue();

            queue.Enqueue(item);
        }
    }

Answer 4

I don't think it can get more succinct than this - also ensuring to Dispose the IEnumerator<T>:

public static IEnumerable<T> SkipLast<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source)
{
    using (var it = source.GetEnumerator())
    {
        if (it.MoveNext())
        {
            var item = it.Current;
            while (it.MoveNext())
            {
                yield return item;
                item = it.Current;
            }
        }
    }
}

Edit: technically identical to this answer.