Question

I have the following data in my database (comma separated strings):

“word, test, hello”
“test, lorem, word”
“test”
…
etc

How can I transform this data into a Dictionary whereby each string is separated into each distinct word together with the number of times that it occurs, i.e.

{"test", 3},  {"word", 2}, {"hello", 1}, {"lorem", 1}

I will have approximately 3000 rows of data in case this makes a difference to any solution offered. Also I am using .NET 3.5 (and would be interested to see any solution using linq)

Answer 1

IEnumerable<string> strings = ...;

Dictionary<string,int> result = strings.SelectMany(s => s.Split(','))
                                       .GroupBy(s => s.Trim())
                                       .ToDictionary(g => g.Key, g => g.Count());