Question

I have a block of C# that looks like this

    public static string[,] FileTypesDict = new string[,] {
            {"txt", "ReadFile"},
            {"doc", "ReadMSOfficeWordFile"},
            {"docx", "ReadMSOfficeWordFile"},
            {"xls", "ReadMSOfficeExcelFile"},
            {"xlsx", "ReadMSOfficeExcelFile"},
            {"pdf", "ReadPDFFile"},
    };

I would like to use this inside another function like this…

    static void FindFiles() {
        foreach (string type[] in FileTypesDict) {
            // Find all files with extension
            string[] files = Directory.GetFiles(FilePath, type[0]);
            // To be used in another fun way, the longer description
            string filetype = type[1]
        }
    }

That, of course, doesn’t work… It seems to only work when I do this –>

    static void FindFiles() {
        foreach (string type in FileTypesDict) {
            Console.WriteLine(type);
        }
    }

That will print each part of each array, like this –>

txt
ReadFile
doc
ReadMSOfficeWordFile
docx
ReadMSOfficeWordFile
xls
ReadMSOfficeExcelFile
xlsx
ReadMSOfficeExcelFile
pdf
ReadPDFFile

I’d basically like to look over the array of arrays and use each array inside of the loop…

Answer 1

You should be using a Dictionary for this, as it makes things much neater and readable.

You could do this:

Dictionary<string, string> fileTypes = new Dictionary<string, string>()
{
    {"txt", "ReadFile"},
    {"doc", "ReadMSOfficeWordFile"},
    {"docx", "ReadMSOfficeWordFile"},
    {"xls", "ReadMSOfficeExcelFile"},
    {"xlsx", "ReadMSOfficeExcelFile"},
    {"pdf", "ReadPDFFile"}
};

foreach (KeyValuePair<string, string> file in fileTypes)
{
    Console.WriteLine(String.Format("{0} - {1}", file.Key, file.Value));
}

Or if you wanted to make the value a collection of string, you could do this:

   Dictionary<string, List<string>> fileTypesWithList = new Dictionary<string, List<string>>()
        {
            { "txt", new List<string>() { "Some", "Other", "Data" }}
        };

        foreach (KeyValuePair<string, List<string>> file in fileTypesWithList)
        {
            foreach (string s in file.Value)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(String.Format("{0} - {1}", file.Key, s));
            }

        }