Efficient, Immutable, Extensible Collections for .

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• Immutable collections? 10 answers

It seems to me there is an extreme lack of safe, immutable collection types for .NET, in particular BCL but I've not seen much work done outside either. Do anyone have any pointers to a (preferably) production quality, fast, immutable collections library for .NET. A fast list type is essential. I'm not yet prepared to switch to F#.

*Edit: Note to searchers, this is being rolled into the BCL soon: .NET immutable collections

Answer 1

I wrote an ImmutableList<T> class some time ago :

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

public class ImmutableList<T> : IList<T>, IEquatable<ImmutableList<T>>
{
    #region Private data

    private readonly IList<T> _items;
    private readonly int _hashCode;

    #endregion

    #region Constructor

    public ImmutableList(IEnumerable<T> items)
    {
        _items = items.ToArray();
        _hashCode = ComputeHash();
    }

    #endregion

    #region Public members

    public ImmutableList<T> Add(T item)
    {
        return this
                .Append(item)
                .AsImmutable();
    }

    public ImmutableList<T> Remove(T item)
    {
        return this
                .SkipFirst(it => object.Equals(it, item))
                .AsImmutable();
    }

    public ImmutableList<T> Insert(int index, T item)
    {
        return this
                .InsertAt(index, item)
                .AsImmutable();
    }

    public ImmutableList<T> RemoveAt(int index)
    {
        return this
                .SkipAt(index)
                .AsImmutable();
    }

    public ImmutableList<T> Replace(int index, T item)
    {
        return this
                .ReplaceAt(index, item)
                .AsImmutable();
    }

    #endregion

    #region Interface implementations

    public int IndexOf(T item)
    {
        if (_items == null)
            return -1;

        return _items.IndexOf(item);
    }

    public bool Contains(T item)
    {
        if (_items == null)
            return false;

        return _items.Contains(item);
    }

    public void CopyTo(T[] array, int arrayIndex)
    {
        if (_items == null)
            return;

        _items.CopyTo(array, arrayIndex);
    }

    public int Count
    {
        get
        {
            if (_items == null)
                return 0;

            return _items.Count;
        }
    }

    public IEnumerator<T> GetEnumerator()
    {
        if (_items == null)
            return Enumerable.Empty<T>().GetEnumerator();

        return _items.GetEnumerator();
    }

    public bool Equals(ImmutableList<T> other)
    {
        if (other == null || this._hashCode != other._hashCode)
            return false;
        return this.SequenceEqual(other);
    }

    #endregion

    #region Explicit interface implementations

    void IList<T>.Insert(int index, T item)
    {
        throw new InvalidOperationException();
    }

    void IList<T>.RemoveAt(int index)
    {
        throw new InvalidOperationException();
    }

    T IList<T>.this[int index]
    {
        get
        {
            if (_items == null)
                throw new IndexOutOfRangeException();

            return _items[index];
        }
        set
        {
            throw new InvalidOperationException();
        }
    }

    void ICollection<T>.Add(T item)
    {
        throw new InvalidOperationException();
    }

    void ICollection<T>.Clear()
    {
        throw new InvalidOperationException();
    }

    bool ICollection<T>.IsReadOnly
    {
        get { return true; }
    }

    bool ICollection<T>.Remove(T item)
    {
        throw new InvalidOperationException();
    }

    IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()
    {
        return this.GetEnumerator();
    }

    #endregion

    #region Overrides

    public override bool Equals(object obj)
    {
        if (obj is ImmutableList<T>)
        {
            var other = (ImmutableList<T>)obj;
            return this.Equals(other);
        }
        return false;
    }

    public override int GetHashCode()
    {
        return _hashCode;
    }

    #endregion

    #region Private methods

    private int ComputeHash()
    {
        if (_items == null)
            return 0;

        return _items
            .Aggregate(
                983,
                (hash, item) =>
                    item != null
                        ? 457 * hash ^ item.GetHashCode()
                        : hash);
    }

    #endregion
}

All methods that modify the collection return a modified copy. In order to fulfill with the IList<T> interface contract, the standard Add/Remove/Delete/Clear methods are implemented explicitly, but they throw an InvalidOperationException.

This class uses a few non-standard extension methods, here they are :

public static class ExtensionMethods
{
    public static IEnumerable<T> Append<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source, T item)
    {
        return source.Concat(new[] { item });
    }

    public static IEnumerable<T> SkipFirst<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source, Func<T, bool> predicate)
    {
        bool skipped = false;
        foreach (var item in source)
        {
            if (!skipped && predicate(item))
            {
                skipped = true;
                continue;
            }

            yield return item;
        }
    }

    public static IEnumerable<T> SkipAt<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source, int index)
    {
        return source.Where((it, i) => i != index);
    }

    public static IEnumerable<T> InsertAt<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source, int index, T item)
    {
        int i = 0;
        foreach (var it in source)
        {
            if (i++ == index)
                yield return item;

            yield return it;
        }
    }

    public static IEnumerable<T> ReplaceAt<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source, int index, T item)
    {
        return source.Select((it, i) => i == index ? item : it);
    }
}

And here's a helper class to create instances of ImmutableList<T> :

public static class ImmutableList
{
    public static ImmutableList<T> CreateFrom<T>(IEnumerable<T> source)
    {
        return new ImmutableList<T>(source);
    }

    public static ImmutableList<T> Create<T>(params T[] items)
    {
        return new ImmutableList<T>(items);
    }

    public static ImmutableList<T> AsImmutable<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source)
    {
        return new ImmutableList<T>(source);
    }
}

Here's a usage example :

    [Test]
    public void Test_ImmutableList()
    {
        var expected = ImmutableList.Create("zoo", "bar", "foo");
        var input = ImmutableList.Create("foo", "bar", "baz");
        var inputSave = input.AsImmutable();
        var actual = input
                .Add("foo")
                .RemoveAt(0)
                .Replace(0, "zoo")
                .Insert(1, "bar")
                .Remove("baz");

        Assert.AreEqual(inputSave, input, "Input collection was modified");
        Assert.AreEqual(expected, actual);
    }

I can't say it's production quality, as I haven't tested it thoroughly, but so far it seems to work just fine...

Answer 2

You might want to take a look at the Microsoft.FSharp.Collections namespace in the FSharp.Core assembly. You do not have to program in F# to make use of these types.

Keep in mind that the names will be different when used from outside F#. For example, the Map in F# is known as FSharpMap from C#.

Answer 3

• Functional-dotnet by Alexey Romanov
• Sasa by Sandro Magi
• Kinet by Tony Morris

Answer 4

You may look at Extras or System.collections.concurrent tutorial

Answer 5

C5 springs to mind, but I'm not sure how fast it is. It has been around for years, and is very stable.

Additionally, List<T>.AsReadOnly() does the job rather well IMO, but unfortunately there is no equivalent for dictionaries or arbitrary ICollection<T>'s.

Answer 6

The .NET BCL team has released a Immutable Collections preview for .NET 4.5