Question

I have an array of type string that looks like this:
"test1|True,test2|False,test3|False,test4|True".
This is essentially a 2d array like so
[test1][True]
[test2][False]
[test3][False]
[test4][True].

I want to convert this into a dictionary<string,bool> using linq, something like:

Dictionary<string, bool> myResults = results.Split(",".ToCharArray).ToDictionary()

any ideas?

Answer 1

First turn your string into a proper array:

String sData = "test1|True,test2|False,test3|False,test4|True";
String[] sDataArray = sData.Split(',');

Then you can process the String[] into a dictionary:

var sDict = sDataArray.ToDictionary(
        sKey => sKey.Split('|')[0], 
        sElement => bool.Parse(sElement.Split('|')[1])
    );

The ToDictionary method takes 2 functions which extract the key and element data from the each source array element.

Here, I’ve extracted each half by splitting on the “|” and then used the first half as the key and the second I’ve parsed into a bool to use as the element.

Obviously this contains no error checking so could fail if the source string wasn’t comma separated, or if each element wasn’t pipe separated. So be careful with where your source string comes from. If it doesn’t match this pattern exactly it’s going to fail so you’ll need to do some tests and validation.

Marcelo’s answer is similar, but I think it’s a bit more elegant.