How to get the index of an element in an IEnumerable?

Stumbled across this today in a search for answers and I thought I'd add my version to the list (No pun intended). It utlises the null conditional operator of c#6.0

IEnumerable<Item> collection = GetTheCollection();

var index = collection
.Select((item,idx) => new { Item = item, Index = idx })
//or .FirstOrDefault(_ =>  _.Item.Prop == something)
.FirstOrDefault(_ => _.Item == itemToFind)?.Index ?? -1;

I've done some 'racing of the old horses' (testing) and for large collections (~100,000), worst case scenario that item you want is at the end, this is 2x faster than doing ToList().FindIndex(). If the Item you want is in the middle its ~4x faster.

For smaller collections (~10,000) it seems to be only marginally faster

Heres how I tested it https://gist.github.com/insulind/16310945247fcf13ba186a45734f254e

An alternative to finding the index after the fact is to wrap the Enumerable, somewhat similar to using the Linq GroupBy() method.

public static class IndexedEnumerable
{
    public static IndexedEnumerable<T> ToIndexed<T>(this IEnumerable<T> items)
    {
        return IndexedEnumerable<T>.Create(items);
    }
}

public class IndexedEnumerable<T> : IEnumerable<IndexedEnumerable<T>.IndexedItem>
{
    private readonly IEnumerable<IndexedItem> _items;

    public IndexedEnumerable(IEnumerable<IndexedItem> items)
    {
        _items = items;
    }

    public class IndexedItem
    {
        public IndexedItem(int index, T value)
        {
            Index = index;
            Value = value;
        }

        public T Value { get; private set; }
        public int Index { get; private set; }
    }

    public static IndexedEnumerable<T> Create(IEnumerable<T> items)
    {
        return new IndexedEnumerable<T>(items.Select((item, index) => new IndexedItem(index, item)));
    }

    public IEnumerator<IndexedItem> GetEnumerator()
    {
        return _items.GetEnumerator();
    }

    IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()
    {
        return GetEnumerator();
    }
}

Which gives a use case of:

var items = new[] {1, 2, 3};
var indexedItems = items.ToIndexed();
foreach (var item in indexedItems)
{
    Console.WriteLine("items[{0}] = {1}", item.Index, item.Value);
}

This can get really cool with an extension (functioning as a proxy), for example:

collection.SelectWithIndex(); 
// vs. 
collection.Select((item, index) => item);

Which will automagically assign indexes to the collection accessible via this Index property.

Interface:

public interface IIndexable
{
    int Index { get; set; }
}

Custom extension (probably most useful for working with EF and DbContext):

public static class EnumerableXtensions
{
    public static IEnumerable<TModel> SelectWithIndex<TModel>(
        this IEnumerable<TModel> collection) where TModel : class, IIndexable
    {
        return collection.Select((item, index) =>
        {
            item.Index = index;
            return item;
        });
    }
}

public class SomeModelDTO : IIndexable
{
    public Guid Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public decimal Price { get; set; }

    public int Index { get; set; }
}

// In a method
var items = from a in db.SomeTable
            where a.Id == someValue
            select new SomeModelDTO
            {
                Id = a.Id,
                Name = a.Name,
                Price = a.Price
            };

return items.SelectWithIndex()
            .OrderBy(m => m.Name)
            .Skip(pageStart)
            .Take(pageSize)
            .ToList();