Missed opportunity to use Where¶
ID: cs/linq/missed-where
Kind: problem
Security severity:
Severity: recommendation
Precision: high
Tags:
- maintainability
- language-features
Query suites:
- csharp-security-and-quality.qls
Click to see the query in the CodeQL repository
Programmers sometimes need to iterative over a filtered version of a sequence, rather than the sequence itself. For example, you might want to print out only the numbers in the range [1,10] that are even. One standard way of doing this is to write a loop that iterates over the whole sequence, testing the variable each iteration to determine whether or not it is even. This is often written using either if(!condition(var)) continue; as the initial statement in the loop, or by enclosing the entire loop body with if(condition(var)).
Recommendation¶
This pattern works well and is also available as the Where method in LINQ in C# 3.5 and above. It is better to use a library method in preference to writing your own pattern unless you have a specific need for a custom version. In particular, this makes the code easier to read by expressing the intent better and by reducing the nesting depth of the code.
Example¶
This example shows two ways of iterating over a series of integers and only performing an action on the even ones.
class MissedWhereOpportunity
{
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
List<int> lst = Enumerable.Range(1, 10).ToList();
foreach (int i in lst)
{
if (i % 2 != 0)
continue;
Console.WriteLine(i);
Console.WriteLine((i / 2));
}
foreach (int i in lst)
{
if (i % 2 == 0)
{
Console.WriteLine(i);
Console.WriteLine((i / 2));
}
}
}
}
This is far better expressed using the Where method.
class MissedWhereOpportunityFix
{
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
List<int> lst = Enumerable.Range(1, 10).ToList();
foreach (int i in lst.Where(e => e % 2 == 0))
{
Console.WriteLine(i);
Console.WriteLine((i / 2));
}
}
}
References¶
MSDN: Enumerable.Where Method.