Possible to iterate backwards through a foreach?

Question

I know I could use a for statement and achieve the same effect, but can I loop backwards through a foreach loop in C#?

Answer 1

If you are on .NET 3.5 you can do this:

IEnumerable<int> enumerableThing = ...;
foreach (var x in enumerableThing.Reverse())

It isn't very efficient as it has to basically go through the enumerator forwards putting everything on a stack then pops everything back out in reverse order.

If you have a directly-indexable collection (e.g. IList) you should definitely use a for loop instead.

If you are on .NET 2.0 and cannot use a for loop (i.e. you just have an IEnumerable) then you will just have to write your own Reverse function. This should work:

static IEnumerable<T> Reverse<T>(IEnumerable<T> input)
{
    return new Stack<T>(input);
}

This relies on some behaviour which is perhaps not that obvious. When you pass in an IEnumerable to the stack constructor it will iterate through it and push the items onto the stack. When you then iterate through the stack it pops things back out in reverse order.

This and the .NET 3.5 Reverse() extension method will obviously blow up if you feed it an IEnumerable which never stops returning items.

Answer 2

When working with a list (direct indexing), you cannot do it as efficiently as using a for loop.

Edit: Which generally means, when you are able to use a for loop, it's likely the correct method for this task. Plus, for as much as foreach is implemented in-order, the construct itself is built for expressing loops that are independent of element indexes and iteration order, which is particularly important in parallel programming. It is my opinion that iteration relying on order should not use foreach for looping.

Answer 3

As 280Z28 says, for an IList<T> you can just use the index. You could hide this in an extension method:

public static IEnumerable<T> FastReverse<T>(this IList<T> items)
{
    for (int i = items.Count-1; i >= 0; i--)
    {
        yield return items[i];
    }
}

This will be faster than Enumerable.Reverse() which buffers all the data first. (I don't believe Reverse has any optimisations applied in the way that Count() does.) Note that this buffering means that the data is read completely when you first start iterating, whereas FastReverse will "see" any changes made to the list while you iterate. (It will also break if you remove multiple items between iterations.)

For general sequences, there's no way of iterating in reverse - the sequence could be infinite, for example:

public static IEnumerable<T> GetStringsOfIncreasingSize()
{
    string ret = "";
    while (true)
    {
        yield return ret;
        ret = ret + "x";
    }
}

What would you expect to happen if you tried to iterate over that in reverse?

Answer 4

Before using foreach for iteration, reverse the list by the reverse method:

    myList.Reverse();
    foreach( List listItem in myList)
    {
       Console.WriteLine(listItem);
    }

Answer 5

If you use a List<T>, you can also use this code:

List<string> list = new List<string>();
list.Add("1");
list.Add("2");
list.Add("3");
list.Reverse();

This is a method that write the list reverse in itself.

Now the foreach:

foreach(string s in list)
{
    Console.WriteLine(s);
}

The output is:

3
2
1

Answer 6

Sometimes you don't have the luxury of indexing, or perhaps you want to reverse the results of a Linq query, or maybe you don't want to modify the source collection, if any of these are true, Linq can help you.

A Linq extension method using anonymous types with Linq Select to provide a sorting key for Linq OrderByDescending;

    public static IEnumerable<T> Invert<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source)
    {
        var transform = source.Select(
            (o, i) => new
            {
                Index = i,
                Object = o
            });

        return transform.OrderByDescending(o => o.Index)
                        .Select(o => o.Object);
    }

Usage:

    var eable = new[]{ "a", "b", "c" };

    foreach(var o in eable.Invert())
    {
        Console.WriteLine(o);
    }

    // "c", "b", "a"

It is named "Invert" because it is synonymous with "Reverse" and enables disambiguation with the List Reverse implementation.

It is possible to reverse certain ranges of a collection too, since Int32.MinValue and Int32.MaxValue are out of the range of any kind of collection index, we can leverage them for the ordering process; if an element index is below the given range, it is assigned Int32.MaxValue so that its order doesn't change when using OrderByDescending, similarly, elements at an index greater than the given range, will be assigned Int32.MinValue, so that they appear to the end of the ordering process. All elements within the given range are assigned their normal index and are reversed accordingly.

    public static IEnumerable<T> Invert<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source, int index, int count)
    {
        var transform = source.Select(
            (o, i) => new
            {
                Index = i < index ? Int32.MaxValue : i >= index + count ? Int32.MinValue : i,
                Object = o
            });

        return transform.OrderByDescending(o => o.Index)
                        .Select(o => o.Object);
    }

Usage:

    var eable = new[]{ "a", "b", "c", "d" };

    foreach(var o in eable.Invert(1, 2))
    {
        Console.WriteLine(o);
    }

    // "a", "c", "b", "d"

I'm not sure of the performance hits of these Linq implementations versus using a temporary List to wrap a collection for reversing.

---

At time of writing, I was not aware of Linq's own Reverse implementation, still, it was fun working this out. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/bb358497(v=vs.100).aspx

Answer 7

Elaborateling slighty on the nice answer by Jon Skeet, this could be versatile:

public static IEnumerable<T> Directional<T>(this IList<T> items, bool Forwards) {
    if (Forwards) foreach (T item in items) yield return item;
    else for (int i = items.Count-1; 0<=i; i--) yield return items[i];
}

And then use as

foreach (var item in myList.Directional(forwardsCondition)) {
    .
    .
}

Answer 8

It is possible if you can change the collection code that implements IEnumerable or IEnumerable (e.g. your own implementation of IList).

Create an Iterator doing this job for you, for example like the following implementation through the IEnumerable interface (assuming 'items' is a List field in this sample):

public IEnumerator<TObject> GetEnumerator()
{
    for (var i = items.Count - 1; i >= 0; i--)
    { 
        yield return items[i];
    }
}

IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()
{
    return GetEnumerator();
}

Because of this your List will iterate in reverse order through your list.

Just a hint: You should clearly state this special behaviour of your list within the documentation (even better by choosing a self-explaining class name like Stack or Queue, too).

Answer 9

No. ForEach just iterates through collection for each item and order depends whether it uses IEnumerable or GetEnumerator().

Answer 10

This is simple when we use the List.Reverse() method and foreach together.

 List<int> numbers = new List<int>() { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 };

        // Reverse the order of the elements            
        foreach (int i in numbers.Reverse())
        {
            // Display the element
            Console.WriteLine(i);
        }            

You can refer to this post for other options as well.

Answer 11

I added an extension to the list type to help me lazily loop the list in reverse

public static IEnumerable<T> LazyReverse<T>(this IList<T> items)
{
    for (var i = items.Count - 1; i >= 0; i--)
        yield return items[i];
}

use like this

foreach(var item in list.LazyReverse()){
  // do some work .....
  if(item == somecondition){
     break;// break without loading the reset of the list
  }
}

Answer 12

I have used this code which worked

                if (element.HasAttributes) {

                    foreach(var attr in element.Attributes().Reverse())
                    {

                        if (depth > 1)
                        {
                            elements_upper_hierarchy_text = "";
                            foreach (var ancest  in element.Ancestors().Reverse())
                            {
                                elements_upper_hierarchy_text += ancest.Name + "_";
                            }// foreach(var ancest  in element.Ancestors())

                        }//if (depth > 1)
                        xml_taglist_report += " " + depth  + " " + elements_upper_hierarchy_text+ element.Name + "_" + attr.Name +"(" + attr.Name +")" + "   =   " + attr.Value + "\r\n";
                    }// foreach(var attr in element.Attributes().Reverse())

                }// if (element.HasAttributes) {

Answer 13

This works pretty well

List<string> list = new List<string>();

list.Add("Hello");
list.Add("Who");
list.Add("Are");
list.Add("You");

foreach (String s in list)
{
    Console.WriteLine(list[list.Count - list.IndexOf(s) - 1]);
}