foreach-in.md

title	foreach, in (C# Reference)
ms.date	10/11/2017
ms.prod	.net
ms.technology	devlang-csharp
ms.topic	article
f1_keywords	foreach foreach_CSharpKeyword
helpviewer_keywords	foreach keyword [C#] foreach statement [C#] in keyword [C#]
ms.assetid	5a9c5ddc-5fd3-457a-9bb6-9abffcd874ec
caps.latest.revision	29
author	BillWagner
ms.author	wiwagn

foreach, in (C# Reference)

The foreach statement repeats a group of embedded statements for each element in an array or an object collection that implements the xref:System.Collections.IEnumerable?displayProperty=nameWithType or xref:System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable%601?displayProperty=nameWithType interface. The foreach statement is used to iterate through the collection to get the information that you want, but can not be used to add or remove items from the source collection to avoid unpredictable side effects. If you need to add or remove items from the source collection, use a for loop.

The embedded statements continue to execute for each element in the array or collection. After the iteration has been completed for all the elements in the collection, control is transferred to the next statement following the foreach block.

At any point within the foreach block, you can break out of the loop by using the break keyword, or step to the next iteration in the loop by using the continue keyword.

A foreach loop can also be exited by the goto, return, or throw statements.

For more information about the foreach keyword and code samples, see the following topics:

Using foreach with Arrays

How to: Access a Collection Class with foreach

Example

The following code shows three examples.

Tip

You can modify the examples to experiment with the syntax and try different usages that are more similar to your use case. Press "Run" to run the code, then edit and press "Run" again.

• a typical foreach loop that displays the contents of an array of integers

[!code-csharp-interactivecsrefKeywordsIteration#4]

• a for loop that does the same thing

[!code-csharp-interactivecsrefKeywordsIteration#4]

• a foreach loop that maintains a count of the number of elements in the array

[!code-csharp-interactivecsrefKeywordsIteration#4]

C# Language Specification

[!INCLUDECSharplangspec]

See Also

C# Reference

C# Programming Guide

C# Keywords

Iteration Statements

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