What can I do to pass a list from C# to F#?

Question

I know that the f# list is not the same at the c# List. What do I need to do to be able to pass a list of ints from a c# application to an f# library? I'd like to be able to use pattern matching on the data once it's in the f# code.

Answer 1

You can use

Seq.toList : IEnumerable<'a> -> list<'a>

to convert any IEnumerable<'a> seq to an F# list. Note that F# lists are immutable; if you want to work with the mutable list, you don't need to do anything special, but you won't be able to use pattern matching. Or, rather, you can define active patterns for System.Collections.Generic.List<'a>; it's just a bad idea.

Answer 2

Here is how I ended up doing it.

The FSharp code:

let rec FindMaxInList list = 
   match list with
   | [x] -> x
   | h::t -> max h (FindMaxInList t)
   | [] -> failwith "empty list"

let rec FindMax ( array : ResizeArray<int>) =
   let list = List.ofSeq(array)
   FindMaxInList list

The c Sharp code:

    List<int> myInts = new List<int> { 5, 6, 7 };
    int max = FSModule.FindMax(myInts);

Answer 3

You can pass a sequence of ints - it's basically anything that supports IEnumerable<int>.