Question

I hope this description will suffice, the best way to put it in words is just giving an example of what it is now and how I want it to be. Here goes.

When I execute a certain method, a structure will be generated. Which may have the following content:

> Key: FaceBook, Value: Dinges 
> Key: SocialMedia, Value: FaceBook 
> Key: Medium, Value: SocialMedia

These are associations. According to this Dinges is associated with FaceBook, Facebook is associated with SocialMedia and SocialMedia is associated with Medium.

Now, what I actually need is the following layout:

> Key: FaceBook, Value: Dinges 
> Key: SocialMedia, Value: FaceBook 
> Key: SocialMedia, Value: Dinges 
> Key: Medium, Value: SocialMedia 
> Key: Medium, Value: Facebook 
> Key: Medium, Value: Dinges

I actually have no idea how to approach this. Any help would be greatly appreciated

Answer 1

So, basically, you want to create the transitive closure of your source dictionary. If you don’t have any loops in your dictionary, a simple algorithm creating a new List<Tuple<string, string>> could look like this:

for each pair (key, value) in your dictionary:
    do
        list.add(key, value)
        if value is not a key in the dictionary, break loop
        value = dictionary(value)
    loop

EDIT2: Since it’s quite easy to translate in C#, here you are:

Dictionary<string, string> dic = new Dictionary<string, string>(); // base data
dic.Add("FaceBook", "Dingens");
dic.Add("SocialMedia", "FaceBook");
dic.Add("Medium", "SocialMedia");

var list = new List<Tuple<string, string>>();  // result

foreach (var de in dic)
{
    var value = de.Value;
    do
    {
        list.Add(Tuple.Create(de.Key, value));
    } while (dic.TryGetValue(value, out value));
}

foreach (var x in list)
    Console.WriteLine(x.Item1 + ": " + x.Item2);