Question

I have an object structure that is mimicking the properties of an excel table. So i have a table object containing properties such as title, header row object and body row objects. Within the header row and each body row object, i have a cell object containing info on each cell per row. I am looking for a more efficient way to store this table structure since in one of my uses for this object, i am printing its structure to screen. Currently, i am doing an O(n^2) complexity for printing each row for each cell:

foreach(var row in Table.Rows){
   foreach(var cell in row.Cells){
      Console.WriteLine(cell.ToString())
   }
}

Is there a more efficient way of storing this structure to avoid the n^2? I ask this because this printing functionality exists in another n^2 loop. Basically i have a list of tables titles and a list of tables. I need to find those tables whose titles are in the title list. Then for each of those tables, i need to print their rows and the cells in each row. Can any part of this operation be optimized by using a different data structure for storage perhaps? Im not sure how exactly they work but i have heard of hashing and dictionary?

Thanks

Answer 1

Since you are looking for tables with specific titles, you could use a dictionary to store the tables by title

Dictionary<string,Table> tablesByTitle = new Dictionary<string,Table>();

tablesByTitle.Add(table.Title, table);
...

table = tablesByTitle["SomeTableTitle"];

This would make finding a table an O(1) operation. Finding n tables would be an O(n) operation.

Printing the tables then of cause depends on the number of rows and columns. There is nothing, which can change that.

---

UPDATE:

string tablesFromGuiElement = "Employees;Companies;Addresses";
string[] selectedTables = tablesFromGuiElement.Split(';');
foreach (string title in selectedTables) {
    Table tbl = tablesByTitle[title];
    PrintTable(tbl);
}