Lists, dictionaries, queues, and stacks

Arrays and hashtables are integral to PowerShell and being able to manipulate these is critical. If these simpler structures fail to provide an efficient means to work with a set of data, there are advanced alternatives.

The following .NET collections will be discussed:

• System.Collections.Generic.List
• System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary
• System.Collections.Generic.Queue
• System.Collections.Generic.Stack

Each of these collections has detailed documentation (for .NET) on MSDN:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.collections.generic(v=vs.110).aspx

Lists

A lists is the same as an array but with a larger set of features, such as the ability to add elements without copying two arrays into a new one. The generic list, using the .NET class, System.Collections.Generic.List, is shown next.

The ArrayList is often used in examples requiring advanced array manipulation in PowerShell. However, ArrayList is older (.NET 2.0), less efficient (it can use more memory...