C# Language Tutorial => Skip and Take

Example

The Skip method returns a collection excluding a number of items from the beginning of the source collection. The number of items excluded is the number given as an argument. If there are less items in the collection than specified in the argument then an empty collection is returned.

The Take method returns a collection containing a number of elements from the beginning of the source collection. The number of items included is the number given as an argument. If there are less items in the collection than specified in the argument then the collection returned will contain the same elements as the source collection.

var values = new [] { 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 };

var skipTwo        = values.Skip(2);         // { 3, 2, 1 }
var takeThree      = values.Take(3);         // { 5, 4, 3 }
var skipOneTakeTwo = values.Skip(1).Take(2); // { 4, 3 }
var takeZero       = values.Take(0);         // An IEnumerable<int> with 0 items

Live Demo on .NET Fiddle

Skip and Take are commonly used together to paginate results, for instance:

IEnumerable<T> GetPage<T>(IEnumerable<T> collection, int pageNumber, int resultsPerPage) {
    int startIndex = (pageNumber - 1) * resultsPerPage;
    return collection.Skip(startIndex).Take(resultsPerPage);
}

Warning: LINQ to Entities only supports Skip on ordered queries. If you try to use Skip without ordering you will get a NotSupportedException with the message "The method 'Skip' is only supported for sorted input in LINQ to Entities. The method 'OrderBy' must be called before the method 'Skip'."

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