Linq Sequence contains no matching element

Taswar Bhatti

March 26, 2010

So sometimes you will get these strange errors or exceptions when using Linq Sequence contains no matching element

For example if you use

var result = myEnumerableCollection.First(x => x.Name == person.Name);

1	var result = myEnumerableCollection.First(x => x.Name == person.Name);

This will throw InvalidOperationException with Sequence contains no matching element.

But if you use

var result = myEnumerableCollection.FirstOrDefault(x => x.Name == person.Name);
if(result == null)
 //did not find in the collection something went wrong or …..

var result = myEnumerableCollection.FirstOrDefault(x => x.Name == person.Name);

if(result == null)

//did not find in the collection something went wrong or …..

Which will return you a null if its not found then you can check if the result is null and continue on with your work 🙂

Hope this helps 🙂

Tags: .net, FirstOrDefault, LINQ

Written by

Taswar Bhatti

Taswar Bhatti is a cloud solutions architect specialising in AI and security, based in Istanbul. A former Microsoft MVP (2014–2022) and AWS Solutions Architect, he is the author of Prompt Engineering for .NET Developers and speaks at international conferences across Europe and North America on AI agents, security and .NET.

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6 responses to “Linq Sequence contains no matching element”

david

August 29, 2010

thanks this helped!
Chinthana

November 17, 2010

Thanks very much, I started using it.
Jalal

April 1, 2011

Thank you! Exactly what i want! 😡
Roland

November 17, 2011

Didn’t work for me. I think my error was caused because my ICollection had no items.
Roland

November 17, 2011

Turns Out First throws an exception if a list element can’t be found. MS Suggests using SingleOrDefault instead which will return null if no matching element is found.
vaibhavi

August 1, 2018

Thanks for this help