// ==++==
//
//   Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.
//
// ==--==
/*============================================================
**
** Interface:  ICollection
**
**
** Purpose: Base interface for all collections.
**
** Date:  June 11, 1999
**
===========================================================*/
namespace System.Collections {
    using System;

    // Base interface for all collections, defining enumerators, size, and
    // synchronization methods.
    //| <include path='docs/doc[@for="ICollection"]/*' />
    public interface ICollection : IEnumerable
    {
        // CopyTo copies a collection into an Array, starting at a particular
        // index into the array.
        //
        //| <include path='docs/doc[@for="ICollection.CopyTo"]/*' />
        void CopyTo(Array array, int index);

        // Number of items in the collections.
        //| <include path='docs/doc[@for="ICollection.Count"]/*' />
        int Count
        { get; }


        // SyncRoot will return an Object to use for synchronization (thread safety).
        // In the absence of a GetSynchronized() method on a collection,
        // the expected usage for SyncRoot would look like this:
        //
        //
        // ICollection col = ...
        // synchronized (col.SyncRoot) {
        //     // Some operation on the collection, which is now thread safe.
        // }
        //
        //
        // The system-provided collections have a method called GetSynchronized()
        // which will create a synchronized wrapper for the collection.  All access
        // to the collection that you want to be thread-safe should go through that
        // wrapper collection.
        //
        // For collections with no publicly available underlying store, the expected
        // implementation is to simply return this.  Note that the this
        // pointer may not be sufficient for collections that wrap other collections;
        // those should return the underlying collection's SyncRoot property.
        //| <include path='docs/doc[@for="ICollection.SyncRoot"]/*' />
        Object SyncRoot
        { get; }

        // Is this collection synchronized (i.e., thread-safe)?  If you want a synchronized
        // collection, you can use SyncRoot as an object to synchronize your collection with.
        // If you're using one of the collections in System.Collections, you could call
        // GetSynchronized() to get a synchronized wrapper around the underlying
        // collection.
        //| <include path='docs/doc[@for="ICollection.IsSynchronized"]/*' />
        bool IsSynchronized
        { get; }
    }
}