Question

I am trying to parse a string and find a common white space location.

Here is my strings

abc   xyz 123   456
cba 1234a 45623 say
avc  4567 bv    456

There can any number of strings. I need a generic alogorithm preferable in c# where I can find out the common white space locations in above strings.

For example, in above strings common locations are

4, 10 ,16 

which has white space in every string.

Approaches I have been trying includes Intersect , and to get all possible spaces and then compare to find out the common ones but I am trying to find out the optimal solution.

Answer 1

var stringList = new[] { "abc   xyz 123   456", "cba 1234a 45623 say", "avc  4567 bv    456" };
var shortest = stringList.OrderBy(s => s.Length).First();
var result = new Collection<int>();

for (int i = 0; i < shortest.Length; i++)
{
    if (stringList.All(c => c[i] == ' ')) result.Add(i+1);
}

// Test the results
foreach (var index in result)
{
    Console.WriteLine(index);
}