Best string container: StringCollection, Collection<string>, List<string>, ArrayList, ..?

.net list collections containers ilist
abatishchev picture abatishchev · Mar 21, 2009 · Viewed 9.8k times · Source

What is the most suitable container just for strings holding in some array with non-predetermined upper boundary, which length is unknown on it's creation.

For simple code like:

var list = new SomeContainer(); // size is unknown
for()/foreach()/do()/while() // any loop
{
  list.Add(string);
}

Is it StringCollection as optimized Collection for string, or just Collection<string> or List<string> or ArrayList ? What is the different between them?

Answer

Marc Gravell picture Marc Gravell · Mar 21, 2009

For what you need, List<string> is probably the most versatile. StringCollection was handy in 1.1, when (without generics) you needed specific classes for typed collections. Collection<string> is handy if you want to subclass it to provide validation etc.

Either way, in 3.5, LINQ will provide lots of additional methods for them - but without LINQ, List<T> has more features (Find, Sort, etc)

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