IEnumerable Chunk In .NET 6

This post is part of a series on .NET 6 and C# 10 features. Use the following links to navigate to other articles in the series and build up your .NET 6/C# 10 knowledge! While the articles are seperated into .NET 6 and C# 10 changes, these days the lines are very blurred so don’t read too much into it.

.NET 6

Minimal API Framework
DateOnly and TimeOnly Types
LINQ OrDefault Enhancements
Implicit Using Statements
IEnumerable Chunk
SOCKS Proxy Support
Priority Queue
MaxBy/MinBy

C# 10

Global Using Statements
File Scoped Namespaces

While looking through changes mentioned in .NET 6, I noticed that there was a new “Chunk” method on IEnumerable. This method was actually kindof simple, and yet powerful. Immediately I knew of a bunch of places in my code where I would love to use this, especially where I do parallel processing.

So of course, why not a quick write up to talk a little bit more about this utility!

Getting Setup With .NET 6 Preview

At the time of writing, .NET 6 is in preview, and is not currently available in general release. That doesn’t mean it’s hard to set up, it just means that generally you’re not going to have it already installed on your machine if you haven’t already been playing with some of the latest fandangle features.

To get set up using .NET 6, you can go and read out guide here : https://dotnetcoretutorials.com/2021/03/13/getting-setup-with-net-6-preview/

Remember, this feature is *only* available in .NET 6. Not .NET 5, not .NET Core 3.1, or any other version you can think of. 6.

IEnumerable.Chunk In A Nutshell

At it’s simplest, we can write code like so :

var list = Enumerable.Range(1, 100);
var chunkSize = 10;
foreach(var chunk in list.Chunk(chunkSize)) //Returns a chunk with the correct size. 
{
    foreach(var item in chunk)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(item);
    }
}

Allowing us to “chunk” data back. I’ve often done similar code when I want to “batch” things, Especially when running things in parallel like so :

var list = Enumerable.Range(1, 100);
var chunkSize = 10;
foreach(var chunk in list.Chunk(chunkSize)) //Returns a chunk with the correct size. 
{
    Parallel.ForEach(chunk, (item) =>
    {
        //Do something Parallel here. 
        Console.WriteLine(item);
    });
}

You’re probably thinking, well why not use Skip and Take? Which is true, I think this is just a bit more concise and makes things just that little bit more readable.

I was thinking that this would be a guide full of examples, and I actually had more here, but there’s nothing really to it. Chunk just does what it says on the tin, and is a welcome addition to the LINQ family.