Native C# support for checking if an IEnumerable is sorted?

Question

Is there any LINQ support for checking if an IEnumerable<T> is sorted? I have an enumerable that I want to verify is sorted in non-descending order, but I can't seem to find native support for it in C#.

I've written my own extension method using IComparables<T>:

public static bool IsSorted<T>(this IEnumerable<T> collection) where T : IComparable<T>
{
   Contract.Requires(collection != null);

   using (var enumerator = collection.GetEnumerator())
   {
      if (enumerator.MoveNext())
      {
         var previous = enumerator.Current;

         while (enumerator.MoveNext())
         {
            var current = enumerator.Current;

            if (previous.CompareTo(current) > 0)
               return false;

            previous = current;
         }
      }
   }

   return true;
}

And one using an IComparer<T> object:

public static bool IsSorted<T>(this IEnumerable<T> collection, IComparer<T> comparer)
{
   Contract.Requires(collection != null);

   using (var enumerator = collection.GetEnumerator())
   {
      if (enumerator.MoveNext())
      {
          var previous = enumerator.Current;

         while (enumerator.MoveNext())
         {
            var current = enumerator.Current;

            if (comparer.Compare(previous, current) > 0)
                return false;

            previous = current;
         }
      }
   }

   return true;
}

Answer 1

You can check if collection is IOrderedEnumerable but that will work only if ordering is the last operation which was applied to sequence. So, basically you need to check all sequence manually.

Also keep in mind, that if sequence is IOrderedEnumerable you really can't say which condition was used to sort sequence.

---

Here is generic method which you can use to check if sequence is sorted in ascending order by field you want to check:

public static bool IsOrdered<T, TKey>(
    this IEnumerable<T> source, Func<T, TKey> keySelector)
{
    if (source == null)
        throw new ArgumentNullException("source");

    var comparer = Comparer<TKey>.Default;
    using (var iterator = source.GetEnumerator())
    {
        if (!iterator.MoveNext())
            return true;

        TKey current = keySelector(iterator.Current);

        while (iterator.MoveNext())
        {
            TKey next = keySelector(iterator.Current);
            if (comparer.Compare(current, next) > 0)
                return false;

            current = next;
        }
    }

    return true;
}

Usage:

string[] source = { "a", "ab", "c" };
bool isOrdered = source.IsOrdered(s => s.Length);

You can create similar IsOrderedDescending method - just change checking comparison result to comparer.Compare(current, next) < 0.

Answer 2

There is no such built-in support.

Obviously if your IEnumerable<T> also implements IOrderedEnumerable<T> then you don't need to do an additional check, otherwise you'd have to implement an extension method like you did.

You might want to add a direction parameter or change its name to IsSortedAscending<T>, by the way. Also, there might be different properties in your T to sort on, so it would have to be obvious to you in some way what "sorted" means.

Answer 3

I often find usages for an extension method I've created called SelectPairs(), and also in this case:

/// <summary>
/// Projects two consecutive pair of items into tuples.
/// {1,2,3,4} -> {(1,2), (2,3), (3,4))
/// </summary>
public static IEnumerable<Tuple<T, T>> SelectPairs<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source)
{
    return SelectPairs(source, (t1, t2) => new Tuple<T, T>(t1, t2));
}

/// <summary>
/// Projects two consecutive pair of items into a new form.
/// {1,2,3,4} -> {pairCreator(1,2), pairCreator(2,3), pairCreator(3,4))
/// </summary>
public static IEnumerable<TResult> SelectPairs<T, TResult>(
    this IEnumerable<T> source, Func<T, T, TResult> pairCreator)
{
    T lastItem = default(T);
    bool isFirst = true;
    foreach (T currentItem in source)
    {
        if (!isFirst)
        {
            yield return pairCreator(lastItem, currentItem);
        }

        isFirst = false;
        lastItem = currentItem;
    }
}

Use it like this:

bool isOrdered = myCollection
    .SelectPairs()
    .All(t => t.Item1.MyProperty < t.Item2.MyProperty);

This statement can of course be placed in another extension method:

public static bool IsOrdered<T>(
    this IEnumerable<T> source, Func<T, T, int> comparer)
{
    return source.SelectPairs().All(t => comparer(t.Item1, t.Item2) > 0);
}

bool isOrdered = myCollection
    .IsOrdered((o1, o2) => o2.MyProperty - o1.MyProperty);

Answer 4

There is a short and simple version using Zip, although your IEnumerable does get enumerated twice.

var source = Enumerable.Range(1,100000);

bool isSorted = source.Zip(source.Skip(1),(a,b)=>b>=a).All(x=>x);

Answer 5

Here's an implementation that uses a predicate to select the value to order by.

public static bool IsOrdered<TKey, TValue>(this IEnumerable<TKey> list, Func<TKey, TValue> predicate) where TValue : IComparable
{
    if (!list.Any()) return true;
    var previous = predicate(list.First());

    foreach(var entry in list.Skip(1))
    {
        var current = predicate(entry);
        if (previous.CompareTo(current) > 0)
            return false;
        previous = current;
    }
    return true;
}