LINQ Optimizations for IOrderedEnumerable
.net, c#, linq, optimization
Solution
There are problems there...
- A binary search can't be executed on an `IOrderedEnumerable<T>`, as it ideally needs indexer access into a list/array. So it would have to call something like `ToList()`/`ToArray()` first
- `Distinct` works on the `T` items, but `OrderBy` works on some facet of each `T` - it isn't quite the same, unless you happen to know that it is ordered by `item=>item`; which is rarely the case (and hard to prove).
Problem
Is anyone aware of whether there are there any built-in capabilities in the LINQ library (or a publicly available utility library) for optimized operations on `IOrderedEnumerable<T>`, as opposed to `IEnumerable<T>`? For example, in theory, the `Contains<T>()` extension could potentially be optimized to use binary search when it is applied to a finite `IOrderedEnumerable<T>` and T is IComparable. Another example, would be an optimized version of `Distinct<T>()` that would be deferred and streamable (since on an ordered, comparable collection you can always use skip/match techniques to produce a distinct set).