I'm looking for a way to define a dictionary for reuse. ie. I can create the dictionary object without having to populate it with the values I want.
Here is what I have currently (note code not tested, just example)
public Dictionary<string, string> NewEntryDictionary()
{
Dictionary<string, string> dic = new Dictionary<string, string>();
// populate key value pair
foreach(string name in Enum.GetNames(typeof(Suits))
{
dic.Add(name, "");
}
return dic;
}
The end result should be a new dictionary object with a predefined set of keys. But I want to avoid doing it this way.
It's not really clear whether you're concerned about the amount of code you've written, or the efficiency of it. From an efficiency perspective, it's fine - it's O(N), but that's hard to avoid if you're populating a dictionary with N entries.
You can definitely make the source code shorter though, using LINQ:
public Dictionary<string, string> NewEntryDictionary()
{
return Enum.GetNames(typeof(Suits)).ToDictionary(name => name, name => "");
}
That won't be any more efficient, of course... it's just shorter code.
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