Yield return对于需要遍历数百万个对象的算法来说非常强大。考虑以下示例，您需要计算可能的拼车行程。首先我们生成可能的行程:

    static IEnumerable<Trip> CreatePossibleTrips()
    {
        for (int i = 0; i < 1000000; i++)
        {
            yield return new Trip
            {
                Id = i.ToString(),
                Driver = new Driver { Id = i.ToString() }
            };
        }
    }

然后迭代每一次旅行:

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        foreach (var trip in CreatePossibleTrips())
        {
            // possible trip is actually calculated only at this point, because of yield
            if (IsTripGood(trip))
            {
                // match good trip
            }
        }
    }

如果您使用List而不是yield，您将需要为内存分配100万个对象(~190mb)，而这个简单的示例将花费~1400ms运行。但是，如果使用yield，就不需要将所有这些临时对象都放到内存中，而且算法速度会大大加快:本例只需要大约400ms就可以运行，完全不消耗内存。

yield的用法与关键字return类似，只是它将返回一个生成器。生成器对象只遍历一次。

Yield有两个好处:

您不需要读取这些值两次; 您可以获得许多子节点，但不必将它们全部放在内存中。

还有一种解释也许能帮到你。

直接返回列表。好处:

这样就更清楚了 该列表是可重用的。(迭代器不是)不是真的，谢谢Jon

You should use the iterator (yield) from when you think you probably won't have to iterate all the way to the end of the list, or when it has no end. For example, the client calling is going to be searching for the first product that satisfies some predicate, you might consider using the iterator, although that's a contrived example, and there are probably better ways to accomplish it. Basically, if you know in advance that the whole list will need to be calculated, just do it up front. If you think that it won't, then consider using the iterator version.

考虑到确切的两个代码片段，我认为版本1更好，因为它可以更有效。假设有很多产品，调用者希望将其转换为dto。

var dtos = GetAllProducts().Select(ConvertToDto).ToList();

在版本2中，首先创建一个Product对象列表，然后创建另一个ProductDto对象列表。版本1没有Product对象的列表，只构建了所需的ProductDto对象的列表。

Even without converting, Version 2 has a problem in my opinion: The list is returned as IEnumerable. The caller of GetAllProducts() does not know how expensive the enumeration of the result is. And if the caller needs to iterate more than once, she will probably materialize once by using ToList() (tools like ReSharper also suggest this). Which results in an unnecessary copy of the list already created in GetAllProducts(). So if Version 2 should be used, the return type should be List and not IEnumerable.

那么这个呢?

public static IEnumerable<Product> GetAllProducts()
{
    using (AdventureWorksEntities db = new AdventureWorksEntities())
    {
        var products = from product in db.Product
                       select product;

        return products.ToList();
    }
}

我想这里干净多了。不过，我手头没有VS2008可以检查。 在任何情况下，如果Products实现了IEnumerable(似乎-它在foreach语句中使用)，我将直接返回它。

以下是Chris Sells在《c#程序设计语言》中讲述的语句;

I sometimes forget that yield return is not the same as return , in that the code after a yield return can be executed. For example, the code after the first return here can never be executed: int F() { return 1; return 2; // Can never be executed } In contrast, the code after the first yield return here can be executed: IEnumerable<int> F() { yield return 1; yield return 2; // Can be executed } This often bites me in an if statement: IEnumerable<int> F() { if(...) { yield return 1; // I mean this to be the only thing returned } yield return 2; // Oops! } In these cases, remembering that yield return is not “final” like return is helpful.