C# Language Specification

Degenerate query expressions

A query expression of the form

from x in e select x

is translated into

( e ) . Select ( x => x )

The example

from c in customers

select c

Is translated into

customers.Select(c => c)

A degenerate query expression is one that trivially selects the elements of the source. A later phase of the translation removes degenerate queries introduced by other translation steps by replacing them with their source. It is important however to ensure that the result of a query expression is never the source object itself, as that would reveal the type and identity of the source to the client of the query. Therefore this step protects degenerate queries written directly in source code by explicitly calling Select on the source. It is then up to the implementers of Select and other query operators to ensure that these methods never return the source object itself.

4.