Question

Hi I have a struct like this

typedef struct  
{ 
    string firstname;  
    string lastname;  
} person;

As an input I take a List of strings List<string> like this

"firstname-lastname"

What is the fastest way to convert from the input string to the struct person? can it be done by using LINQ?

The string might not contain a ‘-‘ in that case the sting will be saved in person.firstname and the person.lastname is empty.

Hope I was clear.

Thanks a lot

Answer 1

I assume that you are coming from C++, because the naming and syntax is C++ and not C#. In C# it would be natural to use a class (you can also use a C# struct – just change the class keyword to struct):

class Person
{
  public string FirstName { get; set; }
  public string LastName { get; set; }
} 

With that class you can use linq to create a list:

var people = (
from s in myList
let split = s.Split('-')
select new Person
{
  FirstName = split.First(),
  LastName = split.Skip(1).FirstOrDefault() ?? ""
}).ToList();

The let expression makes the string split once and then reuses the result of the split.