What's the Linq to SQL equivalent to TOP or LIMIT/OFFSET?

Question

Use the Take method:

var foo = (from t in MyTable
           select t.Foo).Take(10);

In VB LINQ has a take expression:

Dim foo = From t in MyTable _
          Take 10 _
          Select t.Foo

From the documentation:

Take<TSource> enumerates source and yields elements until count elements have been yielded or source contains no more elements. If count exceeds the number of elements in source, all elements of source are returned.

In VB:

from m in MyTable
take 10
select m.Foo

This assumes that MyTable implements IQueryable. You may have to access that through a DataContext or some other provider.

It also assumes that Foo is a column in MyTable that gets mapped to a property name.

See http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam/archive/2008/01/08/converting-sql-to-linq-part-7-union-top-subqueries-bill-horst.aspx for more detail.

Use the Take(int n) method:

var q = query.Take(10);

The OP actually mentioned offset as well, so for ex. if you'd like to get the items from 30 to 60, you would do:

var foo = (From t In MyTable
       Select t.Foo).Skip(30).Take(30);

Use the "Skip" method for offset.
Use the "Take" method for limit.

@Janei: my first comment here is about your sample ;)

I think if you do like this, you want to take 4, then applying the sort on these 4.

var dados =  from d in dc.tbl_News.Take(4) 
                orderby d.idNews descending
                select new 
                {
                    d.idNews,
                    d.titleNews,
                    d.textNews,
                    d.dateNews,
                    d.imgNewsThumb
                };

Different than sorting whole tbl_News by idNews descending and then taking 4

var dados =  (from d in dc.tbl_News
                orderby d.idNews descending
                select new 
                {
                    d.idNews,
                    d.titleNews,
                    d.textNews,
                    d.dateNews,
                    d.imgNewsThumb
                }).Take(4);

no ? results may be different.

This works well in C#

var q = from m in MyTable.Take(10)
        select m.Foo