What's the Difference between 'yield break' and 'break"?

[Guest]

I created a test program to implement an iterator.
First, I used 'yield break' in the iterator, it worked normally.
Then, I simply used 'break' in the places of 'yield break', it still worked
normally.
What's the difference between 'yield break' and 'break' here?
Thanks!

 

[Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]]

Can you show your code?

Chances are that your break statement is producing the end of the
production at the same time (and therefore, returning nothing).

Without seeing your code, it's hard to say though.

 

[Guest]

Hi, Nicholas,

Thank you for your reply. The follwoing is my source code.
In the source code, I implemented 3 iterators. The first implements
IEnumerable.GetEnumerator method. The second implements a named iterator
MyCollection.BuildMyCollection. The third implements an iterator in a
property.

In the first 2 iterators, I tried to use 'yield break' and 'break'
respectively. They seems to have the same effect.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;

namespace TestIterator
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
TestIterator();
}

private static void TestIterator()
{
MyCollection col = new MyCollection();

// Display the collection items:
Console.WriteLine("Values in the collection are:");

// Use iterator 1.
foreach (int i in col)
{
Console.WriteLine(i);
}

// Use iterator 2.
foreach (int i in col.BuildMyCollection())
{
Console.WriteLine(i);
}

// Use property iterator
foreach (int i in col.AllItems)
{
Console.WriteLine(i);
}
}
}

// Declare the collection:
public class MyCollection
{
public int[] items;

// Implement an iterator as a property.
// It can only be the named iterator.
public IEnumerable<int> AllItems
{
get
{
foreach (int i in items)
{
yield return i;
}
}
}


public MyCollection()
{
items = new int[5] { 5, 4, 7, 9, 3 };
}

// Iterator 1: Implement IEnumerable<T>.GetEnumerator method
// or IEnumerable.GetEnumerator method.
public IEnumerator<int> GetEnumerator()
{
for (int i = 0; i < items.Length; i++)
{
if (i >= 2)
{
//yield break;
break;
}
yield return items;
}
}

// Iterator 2: Named method
// Implement a method which returns IEnumerable<T> or IEnumberable.
public IEnumerable<int> BuildMyCollection()
{
for (int i = 0; i < items.Length; i++)
{
if (i >= 2)
{
//yield break;
break;
}
yield return items;
}
}
}
}

Can you show your code?

Chances are that your break statement is producing the end of the
production at the same time (and therefore, returning nothing).

Without seeing your code, it's hard to say though.


--
- Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]
- (e-mail address removed)

I created a test program to implement an iterator.
First, I used 'yield break' in the iterator, it worked normally.
Then, I simply used 'break' in the places of 'yield break', it still
worked
normally.
What's the difference between 'yield break' and 'break' here?
Thanks!

 

[Marcus Andrén]

To understand the difference between yield break and break try the
following iterator with both yield break and break:

public IEnumerable<int> BuildMyCollection()
{
for (int i = 0; i < items.Length; i++)
{
if (i >= 2)
{
//yield break;
break;
}
yield return items;
}

Console.WriteLine("You used break.");

yield return 10;
}

Only if you use break will you get the console message and have 10
added as the last item of the iterator.

break only exits a for loop. yield break terminates the iterator, much
like return terminates an ordinary method.

In your simple iterators they did the same thing since you didn't
yield any more items after the for loop.