Question

I have a great excel formula I have been using but I want to distribute something a little more substantial and durable and also user friendly to my group of designers at work. I am also dealing with negative numbers unfortunately so going by the minimum value would not work.

So if textbox1 said 13, textbox2 said 4, and textbox3 said -1, text box 3 would light up or whatever action I chose be performed since -1 is the closest to zero.

Not that it really helps, but the excel formula goes like this: =INDEX(A61:A78,MATCH(MIN(INDEX(ABS(A61:A78),0,1)),INDEX(ABS(A61:A78),0,1),0))

Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

Here is a “fun with LINQ” method

Func<string, bool> isDecimal = s => { decimal temp; return decimal.TryParse(s, out temp);};
TextBox closestToZero =
    (from tb in this.Controls.OfType<TextBox>()
        where isDecimal(tb.Text)
        orderby Math.Abs(decimal.Parse(tb.Text))
        select tb)
        .FirstOrDefault();

if (closestToZero != null)
    MessageBox.Show(closestToZero.Text);