To List<T> or to Collection<T>
Pop quiz. how can tell me what is the difference between List<T> and Collection<T>? And even more important question "Which is the preferred implementation of a generic list these days?"
from a quick look at the classes one can see that Collection<T> is some sort of a customizable wrapper for List<T>... Collection<T> gives more for use as a base class where you can hook the "standard collections" like Insert, Remove, Clear, Set and such. . . This will give you the option to customize these methods according to your needs. Internally, it's Items property is backed by a List<T>.
where List<T> is a read-to-declare-and-use dynamic array of T's, it is represents a collection of objects that can be individually accessed by index. While Collection<T> defines methods to manipulate generic collections.
According to FxCop, List<T> should only be used as an implementation detail, and never be exposed in an API, since you can't easily extend List<T> after the fact. While List<T> isn't sealed, it has absolutely no extensibility points.
Personally, while I never publicly expose properties or methods of type List<T>, I often declare them as IList<T> and implement them using List<T>. This provide the best of both worlds.
When creating your own "collection" class:
- Base class for your custom collection classes Should be Collection<T>
- For internal implementation (private fields and local variables) use - List<T>
- External interface (public properties, methods, and collections) use - IList<T>, ICollection<T> and a good practice will be to use IEnumerable<T>
But let's not forget the other collections type and I certainly do not want to limit to just choosing between Collection<T> and List<T>... remember to consider Dictionary<TKey, TValue> or KeyedCollection<TKey, TItem>, or HashSet<T> if you're collecting things with identity where duplicates shouldn't be allowed, or where fast lookup by key is required or will perform a lot better than linearly searching a list.
Any Feedback or ideas?
(It took me about 35 min to write this post.)