How to get and set size of a C# List

List.Capacity

The Capacity property gets and sets the number of items a list can hold without resizing. Capacity is always greater than or equal to the Count value. 

The following code snippet creates a List of authors and displays the original capacity. After that, code removes the excess capacity by calling TrimExcess method. After that, capacity is set to 20. 

// Create a list of strings
List<string> AuthorList = new List<string>();
AuthorList.Add("Mahesh Chand");
AuthorList.Add("Praveen Kumar");
AuthorList.Add("Raj Kumar");
AuthorList.Add("Nipun Tomar");
AuthorList.Add("Dinesh Beniwal");

// Original Capacity
Console.WriteLine("Original Capacity: {0}", AuthorList.Capacity);
// Trim excess 
AuthorList.TrimExcess();
Console.WriteLine("Trimmed Capacity: {0}", AuthorList.Capacity);
// Update Capacity
AuthorList.Capacity = 20;
Console.WriteLine(AuthorList.Capacity);
Console.WriteLine("Updated Capacity: {0}", AuthorList.Capacity);

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