Dual lookup collection?

Question

I have a heap of byte/string values.

I want a function/collection to look up one based on the other. ie: provide a byte and get the corresponding string back. Provide a string, get the corresponding byte back.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

You could create a simple class to hold the value pair (or even a Tuple would work fine):

public class Item
{
    public string StrVal { get; set; }
    public byte ByteVal { get; set; }
}

Then you could store them in a List<Item> and access them like:

var items = new List<Item>
{
    new Item {StrVal = "first", ByteVal = 1},
    new Item {StrVal = "second", ByteVal = 2},
    new Item {StrVal = "third", ByteVal = 3},
};

// Provide a byte, get the corresponding string back:
byte byteToFind = 2;
string resultStr = items.Where(i => i.ByteVal == byteToFind )
    .Select(i => i.StrVal).FirstOrDefault();

// Provide a string, get the corresponding byte back:
byte resultByte = items.Where(i => i.StrVal == resultStr)
    .Select(i => i.ByteVal).FirstOrDefault();