Inserting Multiple paragraphs with minimal code

Question

I have documents that are generated with OpenXML. I am working on reducing the amount of code required to generate the document.

I have a document section that has 7 paragraphs in it. Currently I insert them with:

var paragraph = new Paragraph {};
body.Append(paragraph);`

So my question is, is there a better way to insert multiple paragraphs without inserting the above code 7 times?

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:30

0

You don't need to copy the code 7 times. You can do this instead:

foreach (var i in Enumerable.Range(0, 7))
    body.Append(new Paragraph());

Or if you are worried about performance, just use a for loop:

for (var i = 0; i < 7; i++)
    body.Append(new Paragraph());

edited May 23 '17 at 10:30

Community

answered Nov 21 '16 at 23:55

Botond Balázs

3

This is unnecessary. Use a standard for loop. You're allocating an enumerator for no good reason – pinkfloydx33 Nov 22 '16 at 00:49
If everybody thought like that, we would all still program in Assembly. This is much more readable than a standard for loop. I would only optimize it if it turned out to be a performance bottleneck. Look at the second and third most popular answers here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3932413/is-there-a-shorter-simpler-version-of-the-for-loop-to-anything-x-times – Botond Balázs Nov 22 '16 at 02:05
2

Completely out of context of the question :) But I don't where using the Range method enhances readability. In the other hand, the performance impact is non-significant on small loops. Maybe Microsoft should implement something like `for(var i = 0 to 7)` if readbility was actually an issue. – Steve B Nov 22 '16 at 10:00
@SteveB If you have a lot of for loops like that, the code quickly becomes hard to read. I think Jon Skeet's `.Times` extension method (the accepted answer to the question I linked) would be the best solution both in terms of readability and performance, but I wanted to use something that is already included in the framework. Also note that the idiomatic python way of doing this is `for _ in range(7): doSomething()`, which is the direct equivalent. I tried to do something like that in C#. – Botond Balázs Nov 22 '16 at 11:30
Thanks, I knew I was trying to overthink this! – kelz1004 Nov 22 '16 at 14:45

1 Answers1