How should i decide to choose one of collection types when I coding?

Question

Many times I avoid to use arrays, because of must be careful to work its size, and I must certainly know data type of elements.

I notice, I usually use List, I am not sure this is necessary many times.

I would like to know how to design code when I work with collections.

Can someone help me to approach to collections? Thanks.

    * Arrays
    * List and List<T> 
    * Dictionary, Hashtable, Queue, Stack ...etc.
    * Sets

There are plenty of similar question, when to use the one over the other. However this highly depends on your use-case and thus is fairly opionion-based, or at least too broad to be answered here in a simple, short answer. — MakePeaceGreatAgain, Jan 18 '18 at 10:38
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/collections/ — Chris Carr, Jan 18 '18 at 10:41
Did you read the section titled "Choosing a collection"? There are also related articles list on the LHS. — Chris Carr, Jan 18 '18 at 10:57
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/collections/selecting-a-collection-class — peeebeee, Jan 18 '18 at 10:58

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 18 '18 at 10:56

Your question is more fundamental. First of all read about basic differences between that data structures. Then you would understand when is is better to use which of them.

Complete guide you could find here - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms379570%28v=vs.80%29.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396 You would become data strutures guru after reading this.

For example: If you need to call element by index - Array is your choice as it allows you to do it easily, but if you know that you would be continuously adding elements to data structure - then List is much better.

Good practice for you would be trying to implement yourself all data structures you point out using simple Array.

How should i decide to choose one of collection types when I coding?

1 Answers1