Generic Key/Value pair collection in that preserves insertion order?

Question

I'm looking for something like a Dictionary<K,V> however with a guarantee that it preserves insertion order. Since Dictionary is a hashtable, I do not think it does.

Is there a generic collection for this, or do I need to use one of the old .NET 1.1 collections?

Answer 1

There is not. However, System.Collections.Specialized.OrderedDictionary should solve most need for it.

EDIT: Another option is to turn this into a Generic. I haven't tested it but it compiles (C# 6) and should work. However, it will still have the same limitations that Ondrej Petrzilka mentions in comments below.

    public class OrderdDictionary<T, K>     {         public OrderedDictionary UnderlyingCollection { get; } = new OrderedDictionary();          public K this[T key]         {             get             {                 return (K)UnderlyingCollection[key];             }             set             {                 UnderlyingCollection[key] = value;             }         }          public K this[int index]         {             get             {                 return (K)UnderlyingCollection[index];             }             set             {                 UnderlyingCollection[index] = value;             }         }         public ICollection<T> Keys => UnderlyingCollection.Keys.OfType<T>().ToList();         public ICollection<K> Values => UnderlyingCollection.Values.OfType<K>().ToList();         public bool IsReadOnly => UnderlyingCollection.IsReadOnly;         public int Count => UnderlyingCollection.Count;         public IDictionaryEnumerator GetEnumerator() => UnderlyingCollection.GetEnumerator();         public void Insert(int index, T key, K value) => UnderlyingCollection.Insert(index, key, value);         public void RemoveAt(int index) => UnderlyingCollection.RemoveAt(index);         public bool Contains(T key) => UnderlyingCollection.Contains(key);         public void Add(T key, K value) => UnderlyingCollection.Add(key, value);         public void Clear() => UnderlyingCollection.Clear();         public void Remove(T key) => UnderlyingCollection.Remove(key);         public void CopyTo(Array array, int index) => UnderlyingCollection.CopyTo(array, index);     }