lazy evaluation of your cachedEpisodes var will make it get executed twice (lines 11 & 13)

make sure that you add a ToList() at the end of the cachedEpisodes  declaration to solve the issue :)

It seems like you are updating a local variable (lastKnownEpisodeId ) when you should be updated some sort of global variable.

But your bug is that you need an OrderByDescending not an OrderBy

linq uses deferred execution (because it uses lazy enumerable). your query uses lastKnownEpisodeId in the query, so it's capturing it in the closure.

when you hit a query where count != 0, you update the lastKnownEpisodeId's value, so when you go to add them to the episodes, it will re-evaluate the query and filter the cache using the new value of lastKnownEpisodeId, in which i'm guessing no episodes match. not sure why you set the lastKnownEpisodeId though (unless you use it somewhere in the code you snipped)

this isn't a real "linq issue" per say as it is more of a closure issue.  a more detailed dive into the issue here is explained by eric lippert on his blog:

blogs.msdn.com/.../closing-over-the-loop-variable-considered-harmful.aspx

blogs.msdn.com/.../closing-over-the-loop-variable-part-two.aspx

Ooh, it will execute the query again, coz you changed the value of the parameter. Didn't know that :)

BTW, I think updating the value of a parameter is a code smell. You should declare a local variable and use that instead. It wont fix the code, but the smell it's nasty :)

It's nothing to do with LINQ. The developer who wrote this probably doesn't know what closures are and how they work.

So the problem is the access to modified closure.

LINQ still rocks, just ask this dev to learn basics :)

so the bug is that you are updating lastKnownEpisodeId, but you could use .Any instead of .Count

Actually, depending on the implementation of the the cache and the Linq provider, what's probably happening is that the .Count() call is running through the entire return sequence, leaving the enumerable at the end of the sequence. Then when .LastOrDefault is called, well, it's already at the end, so you get the default value (0, I assume?)

Linq queries don't rewind.

I know is not an issue but you should avoid using Count() != 0 and start using Any()

Chris Tavares,

Indeed Linq queries don't rewind, however they do restart.

In this case the Linq query will be run three times.

at:

cachedEpisodes.Count()

cachedEpisodes.LastOrDefault()

AddRange( cachedEpisodes )

Each time .Where( x => x.EpisodeNumber > lastKnownEpisodeId ) will be evaluated with whatever the then current value of lastKnownEpisodeId. Which gets changed after the second time, so the AddRange() will work on a different result set as the Count() and LastOrDefault().

btw Derik, why are you using LastOrDefault when you already know there's at least one item?

I sometimes include "query" in the name of the LINQ query variable, to make it obvious that it's a query rather than a result.