Which System.Collections list is best to use for a LIKE search?

[kittyyo]

Hi all!

Imagine a System.Collections list (e.g. an ArrayList or a HashTable) containing person objects with surnames.

If you wanted to search this list for all people whose surname starts with a specific string (e.g. "Sm" when wanting to find "Smith", "Smithers", ...), which System.Collections list is the best to use?

Of course I could simply use an ArrayList and the following code:

foreach (Person p in list)
{
if p.Surname.StartsWith("Sm")
// here is a matching object
}

However this is slow, is there a better way using e.g. an ordered list or a hash table?
I'd be very much interested in the fastest way ;-) (insertion time is not much of an issue.)

Thanks a lot,
Anne

 

[Guru7777]

I think that you can put the items in a DataTable and then use the DataTable.Select() method to run a t-sql like query against it, some thing like "WHERE Surname LIKE 'Sm%'".

This link talks about it some about halfway down the page.

http://www.developerfusion.co.uk/show/4703/2/

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