Question

I have to store this data:

 "AL" => 1997
 "AK" => 1977
 ...
 "WY" => 1997

What’s the best way to store this in .NET? Shall I use just arrays, or arrayList, or another collection?

Answer 1

Try System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary<TKey, TValue>.

You would use it like this:

var values = new Dictionary<string, int>
{
    { "AL", 1997 },
    { "AK", 1977 },
    ...
    { "WY", 1997 },
};

Console.WriteLine(values["AK"]);  // Writes 1977