Casting result of Dictionary of objects after Skip and Take

I have a Dictionary of objects defined like this -

Dictionary<string, MyObject> myObjectDictionary

I would like to grab items in the Dictionary based of an index and count of items. I am trying to use Skip and Take. But this requires recasting it back to Dictionary<string, MyObject>. How can this be done? Is there a different way I should be doing this?

Here is my code and failed attempt to recast -

Dictionary<string, MyObject> myObjectDictionary = FillMyObjectDictionary();

var mySmallerObjectDictionary = myObjectDictionary.Skip(startNumber).Take(count);

//THE FOLLOWING DOES NOT WORK
Dictionary<string, MyObject> myNewObjectDictionary = (Dictionary<string, MyObject>)mySmallerObjectDictionary
Jon Skeet
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Well, you can create a new dictionary:

Dictionary<string, MyObject> myNewObjectDictionary =
    myObjectDictionary.Skip(startNumber)
                      .Take(count)
                      .ToDictionary(pair => pair.Key, pair => pair.Value);

However:

  • You shouldn't rely on the ordering of a dictionary. It's not clear which items you wish to skip. Consider using OrderBy before Skip. For example:

    Dictionary<string, MyObject> myNewObjectDictionary =
    myObjectDictionary.OrderBy(pair => pair.Key)
                      .Skip(startNumber)
                      .Take(count)
                      .ToDictionary(pair => pair.Key, pair => pair.Value);

  • This does not preserve any custom equality comparer that was in the original dictionary. Unfortunately that's not exposed anywhere, so you'll just have to know whether or not FillMyObjectDictionary uses a custom comparer.

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