If you are starting with something that has a .Length
or .Count
(such as ICollection<T>
, IList<T>
, List<T>
, etc) – then this will be the fastest option, since it doesn’t need to go through the GetEnumerator()
/MoveNext()
/Dispose()
sequence required by Any()
to check for a non-empty IEnumerable<T>
sequence.
For just IEnumerable<T>
, then Any()
will generally be quicker, as it only has to look at one iteration. However, note that the LINQ-to-Objects implementation of Count()
does check for ICollection<T>
(using .Count
as an optimisation) – so if your underlying data-source is directly a list/collection, there won’t be a huge difference. Don’t ask me why it doesn’t use the non-generic ICollection
…
Of course, if you have used LINQ to filter it etc (Where
etc), you will have an iterator-block based sequence, and so this ICollection<T>
optimisation is useless.
In general with IEnumerable<T>
: stick with Any()
;-p