string[] colors = { "green", "brown", "blue", "red" }; What does this expression evaluate to? colors.OrderBy (c => c.Length).Single()

125.

string[] colors = { "green", "brown", "blue", "red" };

What does this expression evaluate to?

colors.OrderBy (c => c.Length).Single()

red

Compile-time error

Exception thrown

This throws an InvalidOperationException: the sequence emitted by OrderBy contains four elements, and Single demands exactly one element. To get the result "red", you must use the First operator instead:

colors.OrderBy (c => c.Length).First()
Another option is to use FirstOrDefault (unlike First, FirstOrDefault doesn't throw an exception there are zero elements in the sequence).

Single is good for retrieving a row from a table by primary key, in a LINQ to SQL query:

Customer c =
dataContext.Customers.Single (c => c.ID == 123);
In this case, you'd want an exception to be thrown if there were two customers with that ID.