itemCount

itemCount is a common term in software development used to describe the number of elements contained in a collection, dataset, or user interface item source. It is typically exposed as a property or method named itemCount and is read-only in many APIs, though some designs allow updates to reflect changes in the underlying data. The essential meaning is the size of the collection at the moment it is queried.

In practice, itemCount is used to drive loops, UI rendering, pagination, and virtualization. It informs how many times to iterate, how many items to display in a list view, or how many pages exist. The underlying collection may store the size with a cache to provide constant-time access, or expose a dynamic count by iterating the elements when the size is not known upfront.

Naming and semantics vary by language and framework. Some languages use count, length, or size instead of itemCount. itemCount tends to emphasize the number of items currently represented or displayed, rather than the capacity of the container. In user interface contexts, itemCount often reflects a live view of the data that may change as items are added or removed.

Considerations include performance and correctness. Accessing itemCount on a large or lazily evaluated collection might incur cost if it requires a full traversal. In multithreaded contexts, the value may change between reads without proper synchronization, leading to race conditions if synchronization is not applied.

See also: count, length, size, numberOfItems.