What is the difference between these two linq implementations?
- by Mahesh Velaga
I was going through Jon Skeet's Reimplemnting Linq to Objects series. In the implementation of where article, I found the following snippets, but I don't get what is the advantage that we are gettting by splitting the original method into two.
Original Method:
// Naive validation - broken! 
public static IEnumerable<TSource> Where<TSource>( 
    this IEnumerable<TSource> source, 
    Func<TSource, bool> predicate) 
{ 
    if (source == null) 
    { 
        throw new ArgumentNullException("source"); 
    } 
    if (predicate == null) 
    { 
        throw new ArgumentNullException("predicate"); 
    } 
    foreach (TSource item in source) 
    { 
        if (predicate(item)) 
        { 
            yield return item; 
        } 
    } 
}
Refactored Method:
public static IEnumerable<TSource> Where<TSource>( 
    this IEnumerable<TSource> source, 
    Func<TSource, bool> predicate) 
{ 
    if (source == null) 
    { 
        throw new ArgumentNullException("source"); 
    } 
    if (predicate == null) 
    { 
        throw new ArgumentNullException("predicate"); 
    } 
    return WhereImpl(source, predicate); 
} 
private static IEnumerable<TSource> WhereImpl<TSource>( 
    this IEnumerable<TSource> source, 
    Func<TSource, bool> predicate) 
{ 
    foreach (TSource item in source) 
    { 
        if (predicate(item)) 
        { 
            yield return item; 
        } 
    } 
} 
Jon says - Its for eager validation and then defferring for the rest of the part. But, I don't get it.
Could some one please explain it in a little more detail, whats the difference between these 2 functions and why will the validations be performed in one and not in the other eagerly?
Conclusion/Solution:
  I got confused due to my lack of
  understanding on which functions are
  determined to be iterator-generators.
  I assumed that, it is based on
  signature of a method like
  IEnumerable<T>. But, based on the
  answers, now I get it, a method is an
  iterator-generator if it uses yield
  statements.