I hope this is not a duplicate but I wasn't able to find an answer on this.
It either seems to be an undesired behavior or missing knowledge on my part.

I have a list of platform and configuration objects. Both contains a member string CodeName in it.
The list of CodeNames look like this:

```
dbContext.Platforms.Select(x => x.CodeName) => {"test", "PC", "Nintendo"}
dbContext.Configurations.Select(x => x.CodeName) => {"debug", "release"}

```

They are obtained from a MySQL database hence the dbContext object.

Here is a simple code that I was to translate in LINQ because 2 foreach are things of the past:

```
var choiceList = new List<List<string>>();
foreach (Platform platform in dbContext.Platforms.ToList())
{
    foreach (Configuration configuration in dbContext.Configurations.ToList())
    {
        choiceList.Add(new List<string>() { platform.CodeName, configuration.CodeName });
    }
}

```

This code gives my exactly what I want, keeping the platform name first which looks like : 

```
var results = new List<List<string>>() {
{"test", "debug"},
{"test", "release"},
{"PC", "debug"}
{"PC", "release"}
{"Nintendo", "debug"}
{"Nintendo", "release"}};

```

But if I translate that to this, my list contains item in a different order:

```
var choiceList = dbContext.Platforms.SelectMany(p => dbContext.Configurations.Select(t => new List<string>() { p.CodeName, t.CodeName })).ToList();

```

I will end up with this, where the platform name isn't always first, which is not what is desired:

```
var results = new List<List<string>>() {
{"debug", "test"},
{"release", "test"},
{"debug", "PC"}
{"PC", "release"}
{"debug", "Nintendo"}
{"Nintendo", "release"}};

```

My question is, is it possible to obtain the desired result using LINQ?

Let me know if I'm not clear or my question lacks certain details.
Thanks

**EDIT**: So Ivan found the explanation and I modified my code in consequence.
In fact, only the Enumerable in front of the SelectMany needed the .ToList().
I should also have mentioned that I was stuck with the need of a List>.

Thanks everyone for the fast input, this was really appreciated.