Why GetAllPopulatedSlots return type is IEnumerable

[jackxc]

I dont really understand why the GetAllPopulatedSlots method needs to return IEnumerable rather than an array of EquipLocations?

[bixarrio]

IEnumerable is pretty much an array of EquipLocations. We are also returning equippedItems.Keys in this case, which is a KeyCollection. Both KeyCollection and an array of EquipLocations are IEnumerable<EquipLocation> (in this case) and can therefore be returned. If we returned EquipLocation[] we would have had to create an array from the KeyCollection to return.

[Brian_Trotter]

@bixarrio pretty much sums this up. We don’t have a need for any of the overhead of an Array or a List.

Whenever you’re using foreach, the foreach loop is iterating over each element in an IEnumerable<T>. Because Lists, Arrays, Dictionaries, and virtually all Linq expressions are forms of IEnumerables, this is why we are able to iterate over them with foreach.

At a certain point, you’ll start experimenting with more complex IEnumerables, like Linq expressions which act very much like Database SQL over a dataset.