I liked a James Michael Hare’s post “C#/.NET Fundamentals: Choosing the Right Collection Class“, and I like to re-blog the comparison table:
| Collection |
Ordering |
Contiguous Storage? |
Direct Access? |
Lookup Efficiency |
ManipulateEfficiency |
Notes |
| Dictionary |
Unordered |
Yes |
Via Key |
Key:O(1) |
O(1) |
Best for high performance lookups. |
| SortedDictionary |
Sorted |
No |
Via Key |
Key: O(log n) |
O(log n) |
Compromise of Dictionary speed and ordering, uses binarysearch tree. |
| SortedList |
Sorted |
Yes |
Via Key |
Key:O(log n) |
O(n) |
Very similar toSortedDictionary, except tree is implemented in an array, so has faster lookup on preloaded data, but slower loads. |
| List |
User has precise control over element ordering |
Yes |
Via Index |
Index: O(1)
Value: O(n) |
O(n) |
Best for smaller lists where direct access required and no sorting. |
| LinkedList |
User has precise control over element ordering |
No |
No |
Value:O(n) |
O(1) |
Best for lists where inserting/deleting in middle is common and no direct access required. |
| HashSet |
Unordered |
Yes |
Via Key |
Key:O(1) |
O(1) |
Unique unordered collection, like a Dictionary except key and value are same object. |
| SortedSet |
Sorted |
No |
Via Key |
Key:O(log n) |
O(log n) |
Unique sorted collection, like SortedDictionary except key and value are same object. |
| Stack |
LIFO |
Yes |
Only Top |
Top: O(1) |
O(1)* |
Essentially same as List except only process as LIFO |
| Queue |
FIFO |
Yes |
Only Front |
Front: O(1) |
O(1) |
Essentially same as List except only process as FIFO |
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