Question

Hi I would like to take a list collection and generate a single csv line. So take this;

List<string> MakeStrings()
{
    List<string> results = new List<string>();
    results.add("Bob");
    results.add("Nancy");
    results.add("Joe");
    results.add("Jack");
    return results;       
}


string ContactStringsTogether(List<string> parts)
{
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

    foreach (string part in parts)
    {
        if (sb.Length > 0)
            sb.Append(", ");

        sb.Append(part);
     }
     return sb.ToString();
}

This returns “Bob,Nancy,Joe,Jack”

Looking for help on the LINQ to do this in a single statement. Thanks!

Answer 1

There are not any one liners to do this with LINQ. Note that you can use the Aggregate method to do this, but you will be using string concatenation instead of a StringBuilder. I would consider adding an extension method for this if it something you will be doing often:

    public static string ToCsv<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source)
    {
        if (source == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("source");
        return string.Join(",", source.Select(s => s.ToString()).ToArray());
    }