Readonly wrapper of a LinkedList. HowTo?

Question

.NET v2

When the List has a very useful (4 me) method AsReadOnly() the LinkedList does not have such a method.

Is there a way to "quickly" interface an internal LinkedList to read only from the external code?

Answer 1

Why not just return a IEnumerable<T>? If you just want to let users enumerate the list without modifying it*, IEnumerable is the obvious choice.

If you want to have a read only interface of the LinkedList interface, you can wrap LinkedList, forward read only methods to the wrapped list and deny any changes.

*) Keep in mind that neither ReadOnlyCollection not IEnumerable will prevent callers to change state of objects in case of a collection of reference types. If the objects should be read only as well, you need to implement this as part of their type.