Question

I need to often convert a “string block” (a string containing return characters, e.g. from a file or a TextBox) into List<string>.

What is a more elegant way of doing it than the ConvertBlockToLines method below?

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

namespace TestConvert9922
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string testBlock = "line one" + Environment.NewLine +
                "line two" + Environment.NewLine +
                "line three" + Environment.NewLine +
                "line four" + Environment.NewLine +
                "line five";

            List<string> lines = StringHelpers.ConvertBlockToLines(testBlock);

            lines.ForEach(l => Console.WriteLine(l));
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }

    public static class StringHelpers
    {
        public static List<string> ConvertBlockToLines(this string block)
        {
            string fixedBlock = block.Replace(Environment.NewLine, "§");
            List<string> lines = fixedBlock.Split('§').ToList<string>();
            lines.ForEach(s => s = s.Trim());
            return lines;
        }

    }
}

Answer 1

List<string> newStr = str.Split(new[] { Environment.NewLine }, StringSplitOptions.None).ToList();

This will keep consecutive newlines as empty strings (see StringSplitOptions)