Question

I made a Dictionary<string, string> collection so that I can quickly reference the items by their string identifier.

But I now also need to access this collective by index counter (foreach won’t work in my real example).

What do I have to do to the collection below so that I can access its items via integer index as well?

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace TestDict92929
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Dictionary<string, string> events = new Dictionary<string, string>();

            events.Add("first", "this is the first one");
            events.Add("second", "this is the second one");
            events.Add("third", "this is the third one");

            string description = events["second"];
            Console.WriteLine(description);

            string description = events[1]; //error
            Console.WriteLine(description);
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

You can’t. And your question infers your belief that Dictionary<TKey, TValue> is an ordered list. It is not. If you need an ordered dictionary, this type isn’t for you.

Perhaps OrderedDictionary is your friend. It provides integer indexing.