How can I implement IEnumerator<T>?

Question

This code is not compiling, and it's throwing the following error:

The type 'TestesInterfaces.MyCollection' already contains a definition for 'Current'

But when I delete the ambiguous method, it keeps giving other errors.

Can anyone help?

public class MyCollection<T> : IEnumerator<T>
{
    private T[] vector = new T[1000];
    private int actualIndex;

    public void Add(T elemento)
    {
        this.vector[vector.Length] = elemento;
    }

    public bool MoveNext()
    {
        actualIndex++;
        return (vector.Length > actualIndex);
    }

    public void Reset()
    {
        actualIndex = -1;
    }

    void IDisposable.Dispose() { }

    public Object Current
    {
        get
        {
            return Current;
        }
    }


    public T Current
    {
        get
        {
            try
            {
                T element = vector[actualIndex];
                return element;
            }
            catch (IndexOutOfRangeException e)
            {
                throw new InvalidOperationException(e.Message);
            }
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

I think you're misunderstanding IEnumerator<T>. Typically, collections implement IEnumerable<T>, not IEnumerator<T>. You can think of them like this:

• When a class implements IEnumerable<T>, it is stating "I am a collection of things that can be enumerated."
• When a class implements IEnumerator<T>, it is stating "I am a thing that enumerates over something."

It is rare (and probably wrong) for a collection to implement IEnumerator<T>. By doing so, you're limiting your collection to a single enumeration. If you try to loop through the collection within a segment of code that's already looping through the collection, or if you try to loop through the collection on multiple threads simultaneously, you won't be able to do it because your collection is itself storing the state of the enumeration operation. Typically, collections (implementing IEnumerable<T>) return a separate object (implementing IEnumerator<T>) and that separate object is responsible for storing the state of the enumeration operation. Therefore, you can have any number of concurrent or nested enumerations because each enumeration operation is represented by a distinct object.

Also, in order for the foreach statement to work, the object after the in keyword, must implement IEnumerable or IEnumerable<T>. It will not work if the object only implements IEnumerator or IEnumerator<T>.

I believe this is the code you're looking for:

public class MyCollection<T> : IEnumerable<T>
{
    private T[] vector = new T[1000];
    private int count;

    public void Add(T elemento)
    {
        this.vector[count++] = elemento;
    }

    public IEnumerator<T> GetEnumerator()
    {
        return vector.Take(count).GetEnumerator();
    }

    IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()
    {
        return GetEnumerator();
    }
}

Answer 2

You need to define the interface the current is implementing.

Object IEnumerator.Current
{
    //
}

public T Current
{
    //
}

This way your class has 2 Current properties. but you can access them both.

MyCollection<string> col = new MyCollection<string>();
var ienumeratort = col.Current; //Uses IEnumerator<T>
var ienumerator = (IEnumerator)col.Current; //uses IEnumerator