Would adding an overload for a step size to Enumerable.Range be too niche of a request?

[tacosontitan]

I'm working on a project for code golf and I frequently use Enumerable.Range to generate data, but it's always lacked the ability to specify a custom step size. This leads to me using boilerplate like:

// proper-ish C# for this poll
var samples = new List<int>(capacity: 100);
for (int currentValue = 0, step = 5, count = 1; count < 100; count++) {
    samples.Add(currentValue);
    currentValue += step;
}

It would be nice to simplify this to:

var samples = Enumerable.Range(start: 0, count: 100, stepSize: 5);

However, this seems like a pretty niche overload, which doesn't make it a solid proposal IMHO.

[KennethHoff]

Not gonna lie, I've never thought about this being valid syntax.

for (int currentValue = 0, step = 5, count = 1; 

Anyways.. given that this is all you need, and the use-case is so highly niche, I don't see them adding it.

That said though, you can create your own struct with its own enumerator, so you can do something like this:

foreach (var i in new MySteppyRange(0, 100, 5))
{}

Which is not only less code (especially with a less dumb name), but it's also fully legal code already!

[tacosontitan]

I'm not opposed to just creating a static method for golfing support like R(1,100,5) which would be nice and short, but it got me thinking about the lack of official support for step size, so I decided to bring it up.

[stephentoub]

If we did add it, I expect it would be as part of adding a generic range method:
#97689

[tacosontitan]

Now that's more like it 😄 thanks for the link!