C# 0 The Complete Reference

IDictionary

,

IDictionary

,

ICollection

,

ICollection>

,

IEnumerable

,

IEnumerable>

,

ISerializable

, and 

IDeserializationCallback

. (The last two interfaces support the 

serialization of the list.) Dictionaries are dynamic, growing as needed.

Dictionary

 provides many constructors. Here is a sampling:

public Dictionary( )

public Dictionary(IDictionary 

dict

)

public Dictionary(int 

capacity

)

The first constructor creates an empty dictionary with a default capacity. The second creates 

a dictionary that contains the same elements as those in 

dict.

 The third lets you specify an 

initial capacity. If you know in advance that you will need a dictionary of a certain size, then 

specifying that capacity will prevent the resizing of the dictionary at runtime, which is a 

costly process.