Wednesday 17 February 2016

Generic and Non Generic Collections in C#

What is Collections?
            Collections are nothing but a grouping of items in to a single unit. Before we starting to office, we are looking at our collection that is “Bag”. Bag is collection of items like laptop (if company provided), Lunch box, Pen, ID card, Zandu balm, Vicks inhaler.
            Now the question rises in our mind is Generic and Non Generic collections
The collection of different items in to single unit is called Non Generic collections. So we conclude that our Bag is a good example of Non Generic collection, Since it contain different items as we mentioned above.

The collection of similar items in to a single unit is called Generic
Collections. So we conclude that Footwear rack is the example for Generic collections, since it contains only chapples, shoes and slippers, I hope no one can put lunch box in to Footwear rack.

            Now we think in programming view, here generic collections are nothing but the collections of same types (like int,double,long). The generic collections are specific to the type of data we are going to store in it. If we have to clear about type of data, then generic collections is the preferable choice.
        C# is loaded with different type of collections, but here I taking a single collection for explaining, that is Stack, the following program shows how our Generic Stack is going to hold the similar type of data.
namespace GenericAndNonGeneric
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Stack<int> GenericCollection = new Stack<int>();
            GenericCollection.Push(1);
            GenericCollection.Push(2);
            GenericCollection.Push(3);
            GenericCollection.Push(4);
            GenericCollection.Push(5);
            Console.WriteLine("The Contents of the Generic Collection are:");
            foreach(int i in GenericCollection)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(i);
            }           
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }
}

            In above code, our collection “GenericCollection”  is storing only integer values, if you tries to store something else apart form int type, it result in compilation error.
            The generic collections are available in namespace called System.Collections.Generic,need to specify data type in < >.
Example for Generic Collections
Array, Dictionary, List
            Non generic collections are the collections of the different types, like storing different type data as a single unit, in the below program we see Stack collection as a non generic collection.

namespace GenericAndNonGeneric
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
          
            Stack NonGenericCollection = new Stack();
            NonGenericCollection.Push(1);
            NonGenericCollection.Push("C# coding");
            object o = "123Vivek";
            NonGenericCollection.Push(o);
            NonGenericCollection.Push("#@@@@*&&&");
            NonGenericCollection.Push(55.67);
            Console.WriteLine("The Contents of the Non Generic Collection are:");
            foreach(object obj in NonGenericCollection)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(obj);
            }           
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }
 
}

            In the above code we are putting different type of data(int,string,object,double) in to a “NonGenericCollection
            The Non Generic collections are available in namespace called System.Collections
Example for Non Generic Collections
ArrayList, Hash Table.

Now we have to look at line of code “foreach(object obj in NonGenericCollection) in above example, in this line we are converting all our entered data into a Object type, since we need a common holding point to hold different type of data, so we using object type.
Performance Issue:
Generic collections are faster than Non Generic collections, since type casting (Boxing) is happens in case of non generic collections.

Conclusion:
Based on the requirement we have to decide the usage of collections either Generic or Non Generic.

Some of the collections like Stack and Queue are used as both Generic and Non Generic collections.

Guys please put comments, it will help me to improve.

22 comments:

  1. nice and easy to understand
    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  2. What is Collections in C#
    Collections is a group of objects. The .NET Framework contains a large number of interfaces and classes that define and implement various types of collections.

    please visit below link for full blog.
    http://www.csharplearningsquare.com/2017/04/collections-csharp-mvc-angular.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. very nice discription, using basic example.

    ReplyDelete
  4. "I very much enjoyed this article.Nice article thanks for given this information. i hope it useful to many pepole.php jobs in hyderabad.
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    ReplyDelete
  5. Easy to understand. Nice article.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Nice article , keep writing of this types of article.
    Your explanation is very good with life example Bag and shoes rack.

    ReplyDelete
  7. hi, i am with your example. its too easy to understand...thanks a lot

    ReplyDelete
  8. easy to understand, good job cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  9. It's really nice.

    ReplyDelete

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