Shailendra Chauhan
03
JunDifference between Select and SelectMany in LINQ
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1 min read
07 Sep 2022
Intermediate
31.8K Views
Select and SelectMany are projection operators. A select operator is used to select value from a collection and SelectMany operator is used to selecting values from a collection of collection i.e. nested collection.
Select operator produces one result value for every source value while SelectMany produces a single result that contains a concatenated value for every source value. Actually, SelectMany operator flatten IEnumerable<IEnumerable<T>> to IEnumrable<T> i.e. list of list to list.
class Employee
{
public string Name { get; set; }
public List<string> Skills { get; set; }
}
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
List<Employee> employees = new List<Employee>();
Employee emp1 = new Employee { Name = "Deepak", Skills = new List<string> { "C", "C++", "Java" } };
Employee emp2 = new Employee { Name = "Karan", Skills = new List<string> { "SQL Server", "C#", "ASP.NET" } };
Employee emp3 = new Employee { Name = "Lalit", Skills = new List<string> { "C#", "ASP.NET MVC", "Windows Azure", "SQL Server" } };
employees.Add(emp1);
employees.Add(emp2);
employees.Add(emp3);
// Query using Select()
IEnumerable<List<String>> resultSelect = employees.Select(e=> e.Skills);
Console.WriteLine("**************** Select ******************");
// Two foreach loops are required to iterate through the results
// because the query returns a collection of arrays.
foreach (List<String> skillList in resultSelect)
{
foreach (string skill in skillList)
{
Console.WriteLine(skill);
}
Console.WriteLine();
}
// Query using SelectMany()
IEnumerable<string> resultSelectMany = employees.SelectMany(emp => emp.Skills);
Console.WriteLine("**************** SelectMany ******************");
// Only one foreach loop is required to iterate through the results
// since query returns a one-dimensional collection.
foreach (string skill in resultSelectMany)
{
Console.WriteLine(skill);
}
Console.ReadKey();
}
}
/* Output
**************** Select ******************
C
C++
Java
SQL Server
C#
ASP.NET
C#
ASP.NET MVC
Windows Azure
SQL Server
**************** SelectMany ******************
C
C++
Java
SQL Server
C#
ASP.NET
C#
ASP.NET MVC
Windows Azure
SQL Server
*/
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