Thanks for picking up this book. This is an example-driven book. You will learn about several generic containers and generic algorithms available in the .NET Framework and a couple of other majorly accepted APIs such as Power Collections and C5 by building several applications and programs.
Towards the end, several benchmarkings have been carried out to identify the best container for the job at hand.
Chapter 1, Why Generics?, introduces .NET Generics. We will examine the need for the invention of Generics in the .NET Framework. If you start with a feel of "Why should I learn Generics?", you will end with a feeling of "Why didn't I till now?"
Chapter 2, Lists, introduces you to several kinds of lists that .NET Generics has to offer. There are simple lists and associative lists. You shall see how simple lists can deliver amazing results avoiding any typecasting woes and boosting performance at the same time.
Chapter 3, Dictionaries, explains the need for associative containers and introduces you to the associative containers that .NET has to offer. If you need to keep track of one or multiple dependent variables while one independent variable changes, you need a dictionary. For example, say you want to build a spell check or an autocomplete service, you need a dictionary. This chapter will walk you through this. Along the way, you will pick up some very important concepts.
Chapter 4, LINQ to Objects, explains LINQ to objects using extension methods. LINQ or Language Integrated Query is a syntax that allows us to query collections unanimously. In this chapter, we will learn about some standard LINQ Standard Query Operators (LSQO) and then use them in unison to orchestrate an elegant query for any custom need.
Chapter 5, Observable Collections, introduces observable collections. Observing events on collections has been inherently difficult. That's going to change forever, thanks to observable collections. You can now monitor your collections for any change; whether some elements are added to the collection, some of them are deleted, change locations, and so on. In this chapter, you will learn about these collections.
Chapter 6, Concurrent Collections, covers concurrent collections that appeared in .NET 4.0. Multi-threaded applications are ubiquitous and that's the new expectation of our generation. We are always busy and impatient, trying to get a lot of things done at once. So concurrency is here and it is here to stay for a long time. Historically, there was no inbuilt support for concurrency in generic collections. Programmers had to ensure concurrency through primitive thread locking. You can still do so, but you now have an option to use the concurrent version of generic collections that support concurrency natively. This greatly simplifies the code. In this chapter, you will learn how to use them to build some useful applications such as simulating a survey engine.
Chapter 7, Power Collections, introduces several generic algorithms in PowerCollections and some handy generic containers. This collection API came from Wintellect (www.wintellect.com) at the time when .NET Generics was not big and had some very useful collections. However, now .NET Generics has grown to support all those types and even more. So that makes most of the containers defined in PowerCollections outdated. However, there are a lot of good general purpose generic algorithms that you will need but which are missing from the .NET Generics API. That's the reason this chapter is included. In this chapter, you will see how these generic algorithms can be used with any generic container seamlessly.
Chapter 8, C5 Collections, introduces the C5 API. If you come from a Java background and are wondering where your hash and tree-based data structures, are this is the chapter to turn to. However, from the usage perspective, all the containers available in C5 can be augmented with generic containers available in the .NET Framework. You are free to use them. This API is also home to several great generic algorithms that make life a lot easier. In this chapter, you will walk through the different collections and algorithms that C5 offers.
Chapter 9, Patterns, Practices, and Performance, covers some best practices when dealing with Generics and introduces the benchmarking strategy. In this chapter, we will use benchmarking code to see how different generic containers perform and then declare a winner in that field. For example, benchmarking shows that if you need a set, then HashSet<T> in the .NET Framework is the fastest you can get.
Appendix A, Performance Cheat Sheet, is a cheat sheet with all the performance measures for all containers. Keeping this handy would be extremely useful when you want to decide which container to use for the job at hand.
Appendix B, Migration Cheat Sheet, will show you how to migrate code from STL/JCF/PowerCollections/.NET 1.0 to the latest .NET Framework-compliant code. Migration will never be easier. Using this cheat sheet, it will be a no brainer. This is great for seasoned C++, Java, or .NET developers who are looking for a quick reference to .NET Generics in the latest framework.
You will need the following software to use this book:
Visual Studio 2010 (any version will do, I have used the Ultimate Trial version)
LINQPad
Instructions to download this software are given in the respective chapters where they are introduced.
This book is for you, if you want to know what .NET Generics is all about and how it can help solve real-world problems. It is assumed that readers are familiar with C# program constructs such as variable declaration, looping, branching, and so on. No prior knowledge in .NET Generics or generic programming is required.
This book also offers handy migration tips from other generic APIs available in other languages, such as STL in C++ or JCF in Java. So if you are trying to migrate your code to the .NET platform from any of these, then this book will be helpful.
Last but not the least, this book ends with generic patterns, best practices, and performance analysis for several generic containers. So, if you are an architect or senior software engineer and have to define coding standards, this will be very handy as a showcase of proofs to your design decisions.
In this book, you will find several headings appearing frequently.
To give clear instructions of how to complete a procedure or task, we use:
Action 1
Action 2
Action 3
Instructions often need some extra explanation so that they make sense, so they are followed with:
This heading explains the working of tasks or instructions that you have just completed.
You will also find some other learning aids in the book, including:
These are short, multiple choice questions intended to help you test your own understanding.
These set practical challenges and give you ideas for experimenting with what you have learned.
You will also find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "Suppose, I want to maintain a list of my students, then we can do that by using ArrayList to store a list of such Student objects."
A block of code is set as follows:
private T[] Sort<T>(T[] inputArray)
{
//Sort input array in-place
//and return the sorted array
return inputArray;
}When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
Enumerable.Range(1, 100).Reverse().ToList()
.ForEach(n => nums.AddLast(n));Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
Argument 1: cannot convert from 'int[]' to 'float[]'
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Then go to the File menu to create a console project."
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