You've got a non-obvious pseudo-bug in your initial code - IEnumerator<T> extends IDisposable so you should dispose it. This can be very important with iterator blocks! Not a problem for arrays, but would be with other IEnumerable<T> implementations.
I'd do it like this:
public static IEnumerable<TResult> PairUp<TFirst,TSecond,TResult>
(this IEnumerable<TFirst> source, IEnumerable<TSecond> secondSequence,
Func<TFirst,TSecond,TResult> projection)
{
using (IEnumerator<TSecond> secondIter = secondSequence.GetEnumerator())
{
foreach (TFirst first in source)
{
if (!secondIter.MoveNext())
{
throw new ArgumentException
("First sequence longer than second");
}
yield return projection(first, secondIter.Current);
}
if (secondIter.MoveNext())
{
throw new ArgumentException
("Second sequence longer than first");
}
}
}
Then you can reuse this whenever you have the need:
foreach (var pair in columnList.PairUp(currentRow.Split(separatorChar),
(column, value) => new { column, value })
{
// Do something
}
Alternatively you could create a generic Pair type, and get rid of the projection parameter in the PairUp method.
EDIT:
With the Pair type, the calling code would look like this:
foreach (var pair in columnList.PairUp(currentRow.Split(separatorChar))
{
// column = pair.First, value = pair.Second
}
That looks about as simple as you can get. Yes, you need to put the utility method somewhere, as reusable code. Hardly a problem in my view. Now for multiple arrays...
If the arrays are of different types, we have a problem. You can't express an arbitrary number of type parameters in a generic method/type declaration - you could write versions of PairUp for as many type parameters as you wanted, just like there are Action and Func delegates for up to 4 delegate parameters - but you can't make it arbitrary.
If the values will all be of the same type, however - and if you're happy to stick to arrays - it's easy. (Non-arrays is okay too, but you can't do the length checking ahead of time.) You could do this:
public static IEnumerable<T[]> Zip<T>(params T[][] sources)
{
// (Insert error checking code here for null or empty sources parameter)
int length = sources[0].Length;
if (!sources.All(array => array.Length == length))
{
throw new ArgumentException("Arrays must all be of the same length");
}
for (int i=0; i < length; i++)
{
// Could do this bit with LINQ if you wanted
T[] result = new T[sources.Length];
for (int j=0; j < result.Length; j++)
{
result[j] = sources[j][i];
}
yield return result;
}
}
Then the calling code would be:
foreach (var array in Zip(columns, row, whatevers))
{
// column = array[0]
// value = array[1]
// whatever = array[2]
}
This involves a certain amount of copying, of course - you're creating an array each time. You could change that by introducing another type like this:
public struct Snapshot<T>
{
readonly T[][] sources;
readonly int index;
public Snapshot(T[][] sources, int index)
{
this.sources = sources;
this.index = index;
}
public T this[int element]
{
return sources[element][index];
}
}
This would probably be regarded as overkill by most though ;)
I could keep coming up with all kinds of ideas, to be honest... but the basics are:
- With a little bit of reusable work, you can make the calling code nicer
- For arbitrary combinations of types you'll have to do each number of parameters (2, 3, 4...) separately due to the way generics works
- If you're happy to use the same type for each part, you can do better
