Question

Is it possible to write a lambda expression that will iterate through array of objects and replace all occurences of ‘X’, ‘Y’, ‘ ‘ and ‘Z’ in one of the properties?

E.g.

return query.Select(x => { x.SomePropertyName= x.SomePropertyName.Trim().Replace(' ', "_"); return x; }).ToList();

For some reason, a query above doesn’t replace a single character, when I need to replace multiple characters.

Thank you

Answer 1

When I want to replace one of a number of characters with one single other character, I often use a combination of string.Split and string.Join:

char[] unwanted = new[] {'X', 'Y', 'Z'};
query = query.Select(x =>
{
    x.SomePropertyName = string.Join("_", x.SomePropertyName.Split(unwanted));
    return x;
});

This will replace any occurrence of 'X', 'Y' or 'Z' with '_'. You can combine this with the looping construct of your choice.

As discussed in the comments, using Select does not really add any value in this case. A normal foreach loop would do the job, and would even produce more compact code:

char[] unwanted = new[] {'X', 'Y', 'Z'};
foreach(var x in query)
{
    x.SomePropertyName = string.Join("_", x.SomePropertyName.Split(unwanted));
};