Question

What is the easiest way to parse a comma delimited string list of values into some kind of object that I can loop through, so that I can access the individual values easily?

example string: "0, 10, 20, 30, 100, 200"

I’m a bit new to C#, so forgive me for asking a simple question like this. Thanks.

Answer 1

there are gotchas with this – but ultimately the simplest way will be to use

string s = [yourlongstring];
string[] values = s.Split(',');

If the number of commas and entries isn’t important, and you want to get rid of ’empty’ values then you can use

string[] values = s.Split(",".ToCharArray(), StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

One thing, though – this will keep any whitespace before and after your strings. You could use a bit of Linq magic to solve that:

string[] values = s.Split(',').Select(sValue => sValue.Trim()).ToArray();

That’s if you’re using .Net 3.5 and you have the using System.Linq declaration at the top of your source file.