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LINQ Cast Operator - Resolving Visual Studio Error - "Could not find an implementation for the query pattern for source type <some type>. ‘Select’ not found. Consider explicitly specifying the type of range variable x.”

Sometimes when writing LINQ queries I get caught off guard when Visual Studio shows a compile error with a message stating “Could not find an implementation for the query pattern for source type [some type]. ‘Select’ not found. Consider explicitly specifying the type of range variable x.”

This error can happen if you don’t have the line using System.Linq; at the start of your code file, but usually it’s because there is a problem with the implementation of IEnumberable<t> or lack thereof.

I came across this recently when trying to get the header text of the Columns in a DataGridView. Here was the code I was using:

var columnHeaders = (from x in dgv.Columns
                     select x.HeaderText).ToArray();

The problem is that the DataGridView Columns property is of type DataGridViewColumnCollection. To get around the problem LINQ is having with this collection I cast the columns to a DataGridViewColumn object instead. Here is the code that works:

var columnHeaders = (from x in dgv.Columns.Cast<DataGridViewColumn>
                     select x.HeaderText).ToArray();

Using this technique almost always fixes the error for me. I find it’s the most useful application of the LINQ cast operator.