CSV string handling *

Question

Typical way of creating a CSV string (pseudocode):

1. Create a CSV container object (like a StringBuilder in C#).
2. Loop through the strings you want to add appending a comma after each one.
3. After the loop, remove that last superfluous comma.

Code sample:

public string ReturnAsCSV(ContactList contactList)
{
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    foreach (Contact c in contactList)
    {
        sb.Append(c.Name + ",");
    }
    sb.Remove(sb.Length - 1, 1);
    //sb.Replace(",", "", sb.Length - 1, 1)

    return sb.ToString();
}

I like the idea of adding the comma by checking if the container is empty, but doesn't that mean more processing as it needs to check the length of the string on each occurrence?

I feel that there should be an easier/cleaner/more efficient way of removing that last comma. Any ideas?

Answer

You could use LINQ to Objects:

string [] strings = contactList.Select(c => c.Name).ToArray();
string csv = string.Join(",", strings);

Obviously that could all be done in one line, but it's a bit clearer on two.

< br > via < a class="StackLink" href=" http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4432/" >CSV string handling< /a>

Share on Google Plus

About Cinema Guy

This is a short description in the author block about the author. You edit it by entering text in the "Biographical Info" field in the user admin panel.