Collection was modified; enumeration operation may

Question

This question already has an answer here:

• How to remove elements from a generic list while iterating over it? 22 answers

I'm trying to remove an item from an ArrayList and I get this Exception:
Collection was modified; enumeration operation may not execute.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

I agree with several of the points I've read in this post and I've incorporated them into my solution to solve the exact same issue as the original posting.

That said, the comments I appreciated are:

• "unless you are using .NET 1.0 or 1.1, use List<T> instead of ArrayList. "

• "Also, add the item(s) to be deleted to a new list. Then go through and delete those items." .. in my case I just created a new List and the populated it with the valid data values.

e.g.

private List<string> managedLocationIDList = new List<string>();
string managedLocationIDs = ";1321;1235;;" // user input, should be semicolon seperated list of values

managedLocationIDList.AddRange(managedLocationIDs.Split(new char[] { ';' }));
List<string> checkLocationIDs = new List<string>();

// Remove any duplicate ID's and cleanup the string holding the list if ID's
Functions helper = new Functions();
checkLocationIDs = helper.ParseList(managedLocationIDList);

...
public List<string> ParseList(List<string> checkList)
{
    List<string> verifiedList = new List<string>();

    foreach (string listItem in checkList)
    if (!verifiedList.Contains(listItem.Trim()) && listItem != string.Empty)
        verifiedList.Add(listItem.Trim());

    verifiedList.Sort();
    return verifiedList;
}        

Answer 2

Am I missing something? Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.

list.RemoveAll(s => s.Name == "Fred");

Answer 3

Here's an example (sorry for any typos)

var itemsToRemove = new ArrayList();  // should use generic List if you can

foreach (var item in originalArrayList) {
  if (...) {
    itemsToRemove.Add(item);
  }
}

foreach (var item in itemsToRemove) {
  originalArrayList.Remove(item);
}

OR if you're using 3.5, Linq makes the first bit easier:

itemsToRemove = originalArrayList
  .Where(item => ...)
  .ToArray();

foreach (var item in itemsToRemove) {
  originalArrayList.Remove(item);
}

Replace "..." with your condition that determines if item should be removed.