Enumerable.First(Of TSource) Method (IEnumerable(Of TSource))

.NET Framework (current version)

Returns the first element of a sequence.

Namespace: System.Linq
Assembly: System.Core (in System.Core.dll)

Syntax

<ExtensionAttribute>
Public Shared Function First(Of TSource) (
	source As IEnumerable(Of TSource)
) As TSource

Parameters

source: Type: System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable(Of TSource)
The IEnumerable(Of T) to return the first element of.

Return Value

Type: TSource

The first element in the specified sequence.

Type Parameters

TSource: The type of the elements of source.

Exceptions

Exception	Condition
ArgumentNullException	source is null.
InvalidOperationException	The source sequence is empty.

The First(Of TSource)(IEnumerable(Of TSource)) method throws an exception if source contains no elements. To instead return a default value when the source sequence is empty, use the FirstOrDefault(Of TSource) method.

Examples

The following code example demonstrates how to use First(Of TSource)(IEnumerable(Of TSource)) to return the first element of an array.

' Create an array of integers.
Dim numbers() As Integer =
{9, 34, 65, 92, 87, 435, 3, 54, 83, 23, 87, 435, 67, 12, 19}

' Select the first element in the array.
Dim first As Integer = numbers.First()

' Display the output.
MsgBox(first)

' This code produces the following output:
'
' 9

Version Information

Universal Windows Platform
Available since 8
.NET Framework
Available since 3.5
Portable Class Library
Supported in: portable .NET platforms
Silverlight
Available since 2.0
Windows Phone Silverlight
Available since 7.0
Windows Phone
Available since 8.1