Why am I getting an InvalidOperationException? - c#

foreach (var shotItem in Invadershots)// it points to me to there and doesnt allow me to loop.."{"Collection was modified; enumeration operation may not execute."}"
{
shotItem.Move();// it happens when this simple method called (which actually checks some bool..if the shot was out of the winform).
if (shotItem.removeShot)
{
Invadershots.Remove(shotItem);
}
}
Could it be because i change the List items simultaneously?
How can i prevent that error from occurring?

This is because you trying modify collection Invadershots
Invadershots.Remove(shotItem);
This is not allowed within foreach, use for instead..

You cannot alter a collection whilst enumerating across it. Create a clone of the collection and alter that.

You can't do that deleting an element into a List, that you'r reading in a foreach will crash, surely, try to make a copy to remove with that while you're in the foreach, or make a for iteration and control de number of elements correctly and the out condition.
See you

Related

Update list while adding the new item in a list of string in foreach loop

Suppose we have a List<string> assetIds = GetAllAssetId(assetentities); called assetIds. Now suppose we have a list with 10 AssetIds in it. If you wanted to add the new AssetItems in a list of string and I need to update the list while doing the foreach loop. what would be the best way to do it?
Please have a look of the code here.
I am getting an Error :Collection was modified; enumeration operation may not execute. If I try to go for second time in foreach loop.
Yout change the collection in foreach loop so what you could do - make a copy of the collection in loop
foreach(var element in assetIds.ToList()) {
assetIds.Add(new Item());
)
collection that the foreach loop operates on is different that the one you add to
This is one way to get rid of the error. In your case I assume that there won't be any cases where the newly added item would be used twice.
Edit:
But again think if this is the solution that you want to go for. Maybe rewriting your code is better option

does foreach loop handle Changes in list length correctly?

does foreach correctly iterate over flexible list?
for example
//will iterate over all items in list?
foreach (var obj in list)
{
//list length changes here
//ex:
list.Add(...);
list.Remove(...);
list.Concat(...);
// and so on
}
and if it does ...how?
You can't modify a collection while enumerating it inside a foreach statement.
You should use another pattern to do what you are trying to do because the for each does not allow you to change the enumerator you are looping to.
For Example:
Imagine if you run a foreach on a sorted list from the beginning, you start processing item with key="A" then you go to "B" then you change "C" to "B", what's going to happen? Your list is resorted and you don't know anymore what you are looping and where you are.
In general you "could" do it with a for(int i=dictionary.count-1; i>=0; --i) or something like that but this also depends on your context, I would really try to use another approach.
Internal Working: IEnumerator<t> is designed to enable the iterator pattern for iterating over collections of elements, rather than the length-index. IEnumerator<t> includes two members.
The first is bool MoveNext(). Using this method, we can move from one element within the collection to the next while at the same time detecting when we have enumerated through every item using the Boolean return.
The second member, a read-only property called Current, returns the element currently in process. With these two members on the collection class, it is possible to iterate over the collection simply using a while loop.
The MoveNext() method in this listing returns false when it moves past the end of the collection. This replaces the need to count elements while looping. (The last member on IEnumerator<t> , Reset(), will reset the enumeration.)
Per the documentation, if changes are made inside the loop the behavior is undefined. Undefined means that there are no restrictions on what it can do, there is no "incorrect behavior" when the behavior is undefined...crash, do what you want, send an email to your boss calling him nasty names and quiting, all equally valid. I would hope for a crash in this case, but again, whatever happens, happens and is considered "correct" according to the documentation.
You cannot change the collection inside the for each loop of the same collection.
if you want you can use for loop to change the collection length.
The collection you use in a foreach loop is immutable. As per MSDN
The foreach statement is used to iterate through the collection to get
the information that you want, but can not be used to add or remove
items from the source collection to avoid unpredictable side effects.
If you need to add or remove items from the source collection, use a
for loop.
But as per this link, it looks like this is now possible from .Net 4.0

How to remove all elements from a dictionary?

I use the following code to remove all elements from a dictionary:
internal static void RemoveAllSourceFiles()
{
foreach (byte key in taggings.Keys)
{
taggings.Remove(key);
}
}
But unfortunately this isn't working because an InvalidOperationException is thrown. I know this is because the collection is modified while iterating over it, but how can I change that?
A much simpler (and much more efficient) approach:
taggings.Clear();
and yes, the error is because changing the data deliberately breaks iterators.
Try using the Clear method instead.
internal static void RemoveAllSourceFiles()
{
taggings.Clear();
}
Update: And as Marc pointed out, you cannot continue iterating over a collection while you modify it because the iterator is irrecoverably invalidated. Please read the answer to this SO question for details.
Why does enumerating through a collection throw an exception but looping through its items does not
Dictionary.Clear?
To do what you want to do you are going to need to iterate through the keys in reverse, that way you do not modify the array in the order it is trying to return to you.
Either that or use .Clear()
As said, the .NET default enumerator doesn't support collection changes while enumerating. In your case use Clear.
If you want better control over deletion, use linq:
var deletionList = (from tag in taggings where <where clause> select tag.Key).ToArray();
foreach(var key in deletionList)
{
taggings.Remove(key);
}
The ToArray() extension method will enumerate the LINQ query, and instantiate an array storing the results. This array can be safely enumerated later to delete the contained items in the source dictionary.
I know this is an old question, but for any who's looking for an answer, here some options:
To list() and then use the .remove property.
Make it null/nothing and reinit it?
Forloop in stead of foreach?
while Dict.Count()
clDictObject oBj = Dict.Keys.ElementAt(dict.Count -1);
Dict.Remove(oBj)
end while

Why can't I modify the loop variable in a foreach?

Why is a foreach loop a read only loop? What reasons are there for this?
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by a "readonly loop" but I'm guessing that you want to know why this doesn't compile:
int[] ints = { 1, 2, 3 };
foreach (int x in ints)
{
x = 4;
}
The above code will give the following compile error:
Cannot assign to 'x' because it is a 'foreach iteration variable'
Why is this disallowed? Trying to assigning to it probably wouldn't do what you want - it wouldn't modify the contents of the original collection. This is because the variable x is not a reference to the elements in the list - it is a copy. To avoid people writing buggy code, the compiler disallows this.
I would assume it's how the iterator travels through the list.
Say you have a sorted list:
Alaska
Nebraska
Ohio
In the middle of
foreach(var s in States)
{
}
You do a States.Add("Missouri")
How do you handle that? Do you then jump to Missouri even if you're already past that index.
If, by this, you mean:
Why shouldn't I modify the collection that's being foreach'd over?
There's no surety that the items that you're getting come out in a given order, and that adding an item, or removing an item won't cause the order of items in the collection to change, or even the Enumerator to become invalid.
Imagine if you ran the following code:
var items = GetListOfTOfSomething(); // Returns 10 items
int i = 0;
foreach(vat item in items)
{
i++;
if (i == 5)
{
items.Remove(item);
}
}
As soon as you hit the loop where i is 6 (i.e. after the item is removed) anything could happen. The Enumerator might have been invalidated due to you removing an item, everything might have "shuffled up by one" in the underlying collection causing an item to take the place of the removed one, meaning you "skip" one.
If you meant "why can't I change the value that is provided on each iteration" then, if the collection you're working with contains value types, any changes you make won't be preserved as it's a value you're working with, rather than a reference.
The foreach command uses the IEnumerable interface to loop throught the collection. The interface only defined methods for stepping through a collection and get the current item, there is no methods for updating the collection.
As the interface only defines the minimal methods required to read the collecton in one direction, the interface can be implemented by a wide range of collections.
As you only access a single item at a time, the entire collection doesn't have to exist at the same time. This is for example used by LINQ expressions, where it creates the result on the fly as you read it, instead of first creating the entire result and then let you loop through it.
Not sure what you mean with read-only but I'm guessing that understanding what the foreach loop is under the hood will help. It's syntactic sugar and could also be written something like this:
IEnumerator enumerator = list.GetEnumerator();
while(enumerator.MoveNext())
{
T element = enumerator.Current;
//body goes here
}
If you change the collection (list) it's getting hard to impossible to figure out how to process the iteration.
Assigning to element (in the foreach version) could be viewed as either trying to assign to enumerator.Current which is read only or trying to change the value of the local holding a ref to enumerator.Current in which case you might as well introduce a local yourself because it no longer has anything to do with the enumerated list anymore.
foreach works with everything implementing the IEnumerable interface. In order to avoid synchronization issues, the enumerable shall never be modified while iterating on it.
The problems arise if you add or remove items in another thread while iterating: depending on where you are you might miss an item or apply your code to an extra item. This is detected by the runtime (in some cases or all???) and throws an exception:
System.InvalidOperationException was unhandled
Message="Collection was modified; enumeration operation may not execute."
foreach tries to get next item on each iteration which can cause trouble if you are modifying it from another thread at the same time.

Foreach while adding items to the looping collection

This is the situation:
I'm browsing through some code and I wondered if the following statement takes a reference of the selected collection or a copy with which it replaces the original object when the foreach loop finishes. If the first, will it take the new found pages and join them in the loop?
foreach(Page page in Pages)
{
page.AddRange(RetrieveSubPages(page.Id));
}
Edit: I'm sorry, I made a typo.
It should be this:
foreach(Page page in pages)
{
pages.AddRange(RetrieveSubPages(page.Id));
}
What i tried to say is that if i add some objects to the enumerating collection, will it join those objects in the foreach?
It looks like the code doesn't modify the Pages collection, but the content of the objects in the Page objects in the Pages collection. The Page type having at least collection like method.
In general each collection implements iteration in a way suitable for itself, and generally becomes unmodifiable while iterating, but one could implelment a collection which iterates by taking a snapshot of itself.
There is no mechanism to detect exit from a loop which would allow action to be taken at that point (consider how this would interact with exceptions, break and return in the body of the loop).
In most cases, foreach works against the live collection (no explicit clone), and if you try to change the collection while enumerating it, then the enumerator breaks with an exception. So if you are adding to Pages, expect problems.
I think the safest way is this:
Array<Page> newpages = new Array<Page>();
foreach(Page page in pages)
{
newpages.AddRange(RetrieveSubPages(page.Id));
}
pages.AddRange(newpages);
You'd have to extend this a bit if you wanted to recurse into the subpages.
In response to you question, it does not make a copy.
It creates an enumerator and iterates through the collection. If the collection is changed while this enumeration is happening, in the foreach itself, or asynchronously, you will get an exception:
An unhandled exception of type 'System.InvalidOperationException' occurred in mscorlib.dll
Additional information: Collection was modified; enumeration operation may not execute.
You can, use a temporary collection and join the two afterwards, or just not use an enumerator.
for (int i = 0; i < pages.Count; i++)
{
test.AddRange(RetrieveSubPages(pages[i].Id));
}
foreach uses an enumerator.
The collection over which you loop using foreach, has to implement IEnumerable (or IEnumerable<T>).
Then, foreach calls the GetEnumerator method of that collection, and uses the Enumerator to traverse the collection.
You are not modifying the collection you are enumerating, therefore you won't have any problems with this code.
It is also irrelevant, if an clone of the collection is being enumerated, because the objects contained by both, collection and clone, are still the same (reference equals).
I'm pretty sure you'll get an exception thrown complaining that the underlying collection was modified

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