Can I foreach over an array of structs without copying the elements in C# 8?

foreach works based on the target type's definitions rather than some internal blackboxes. We could make use of this to create by-ref enumeration support:

//using System;

public readonly struct ArrayEnumerableByRef<T>
{
    private readonly T[] _target;

    public ArrayEnumerableByRef(T[] target) => _target = target;

    public Enumerator GetEnumerator() => new Enumerator(_target);

    public struct Enumerator
    {
        private readonly T[] _target;

        private int _index;

        public Enumerator(T[] target)
        {
            _target = target;
            _index = -1;
        }

        public readonly ref T Current
        {
            get
            {
                if (_target is null || _index < 0 || _index > _target.Length)
                {
                    throw new InvalidOperationException();
                }
                return ref _target[_index];
            }
        }

        public bool MoveNext() => ++_index < _target.Length;

        public void Reset() => _index = -1;
    }
}

public static class ArrayExtensions
{
    public static ArrayEnumerableByRef<T> ToEnumerableByRef<T>(this T[] array) => new ArrayEnumerableByRef<T>(array);
}

Then we could enumerate an array with foreach loop by reference:

static void Main()
{
    var colors = new Color[128];

    foreach (ref readonly var color in colors.ToEnumerableByRef())
    {
        Debug.WriteLine($"Color is {color.R} {color.G} {color.B} {color.A}.");
    }
}

Tags:

C#

Ref

C# 8.0