Question

I would like to be able to compare multiple strings with each other and return true if they are all equal. If any of the strings equal “N/A” then they are to be ignored in the comparison. For example:

string1 = "hi";
string2 = "hi";
string3 = "hi";
string4 = "N/A";

would return true, but:

string1 = "hi";
string2 = "hey";
string3 = "hi";
string4 = "hi";

would return false.

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

Assuming that you’ve stored the strings in a colllection like array or list, you can use Enumerable.All:

string first = strings.FirstOrDefault(s => s != "N/A");
bool allEqual = first == null ||  strings.All(s => s == "N/A" || s == first);

Explanation: you can compare all strings with one of your choice(i take the first), if one is different allEqual must be false. I need to use FirstOrDefault since it’s possible that all strings are “N/A” or the list is empty, then First would throw an exception.

DEMO