Difference between Lookup() and Dictionary(Of list())

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Two significant differences:

  • Lookup is immutable. Yay 🙂 (At least, I believe the concrete Lookup class is immutable, and the ILookup interface doesn’t provide any mutating members. There could be other mutable implementations, of course.)
  • When you lookup a key which isn’t present in a lookup, you get an empty sequence back instead of a KeyNotFoundException. (Hence there’s no TryGetValue, AFAICR.)

They’re likely to be equivalent in efficiency – the lookup may well use a Dictionary<TKey, GroupingImplementation<TValue>> behind the scenes, for example. Choose between them based on your requirements. Personally I find that the lookup is usually a better fit than a Dictionary<TKey, List<TValue>>, mostly due to the first two points above.

Note that as an implementation detail, the concrete implementation of IGrouping<,> which is used for the values implements IList<TValue>, which means that it’s efficient to use with Count(), ElementAt() etc.

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