Selecting a subset of elements in LINQ C# with the TakeWhile operator

The TakeWhile extension method in LINQ is similar to Take. With Take you can specify the number of elements to select from a sequence. In the case of TakeWhile we can specify a condition – a boolean function – instead. The operator will take elements from the sequence while the condition is true and then stop.

Data collection:

string[] bands = { "ACDC", "Queen", "Aerosmith", "Iron Maiden", "Megadeth", "Metallica", "Cream", "Oasis", "Abba", "Blur", "Chic", "Eurythmics", "Genesis", "INXS", "Midnight Oil", "Kent", "Madness", "Manic Street Preachers"
, "Noir Desir", "The Offspring", "Pink Floyd", "Rammstein", "Red Hot Chili Peppers", "Tears for Fears"
, "Deep Purple", "KISS"};

We’ll keep selecting the items until we find one that starts with an ‘E’:

IEnumerable<string> res = bands.TakeWhile(b => b[0] != 'E');
foreach (string s in res)
{
	Console.WriteLine(s);
}

This will print all bands from “ACDC” to and including “Chic”. The last item to be selected will be “Chic”, as the one after that, i.e. Eurythmics starts with an ‘E’.

There’s an overload of TakeWhile where you can pass in the index variable of the loop. The following query will keep selecting the bands until we find one that starts with an ‘E’ OR the loop index exceeds 8:

IEnumerable<string> res2 = bands.TakeWhile((b, i) => b[0] != 'E' && i < 8);
foreach (string s in res2)
{
	Console.WriteLine(s);
}

This time Oasis is the last item to be selected as that is the 8th item, so the “i less than 8” condition was reached first.

View the list of posts on LINQ here.

Joining common values from two sequences using the LINQ Intersect operator

Say you have the following two sequences:

string[] first = new string[] {"hello", "hi", "good evening", "good day", "good morning", "goodbye" };
string[] second = new string[] {"whatsup", "how are you", "hello", "bye", "hi"};

If you’d like to find the common elements in the two arrays and put them to another sequence then it’s very easy with the Intersect operator:

IEnumerable<string> intersect = first.Intersect(second);
foreach (string value in intersect)
{
	Console.WriteLine(value);
}

The ‘intersect’ variable will include “hello” and “hi” as they are common elements to both arrays.

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An overview of grouping collections with LINQ in .NET

Introduction

The LINQ GroupBy operator is one of the most powerful ones among all LINQ operators. It helps us group elements in a collection in various ways and lets us control the element and result selection process. However, with its many overloads and Func parameters the GroupBy operator can be a bit difficult to understand at first. At least it is more complex than say the Min() and Max() LINQ operators.

This post will go through the GroupBy operator and many of its overloads with a number of examples.

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Randomly rearrange a string in .NET C#

Say you’d like to randomly rearrange the contents of a string, i.e. put the constituent characters into new, random positions. The following method can help you with that using a combination of LINQ and Random:

private static string RearrangeString(string startingPoint)
{
	Random num = new Random();
	string rand = new string(startingPoint.
		OrderBy(s => (num.Next(2) % 2) == 0).ToArray());
	return rand;
}

Let’s test it with my name:

string myName = "Andras Nemes";
string myNewName = RearrangeString(myName);

So my new name can be something like “drsNeeAna ms” or “AdaNmesnrs e” or even “ArsNmenda es”, I haven’t decided yet.

Filip Ekberg drew my attention to the following alternative solution:

string rand = new string(startingPoint.OrderBy(x => Guid.NewGuid()).ToArray());

View the list of posts on LINQ here.