Convert comma separated string into a List in C#

This post will discuss how to convert a comma-separated string into a list in C#.

To convert a delimited string to a sequence of strings in C#, you can use the String.Split() method. Since the Split() method returns a string array, you can convert it into a List using the ToList() method. You need to include the System.Linq namespace to access the ToList() method.

using System;

using System.Linq;

using System.Collections.Generic;

public class Example

{

public static void Main()

{

string s = "red,blue,green";

List<string> tokens = s.Split(',').ToList();

Console.WriteLine(String.Join(", ", tokens)); // red, blue, green

}

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Alternately, you can use the List<T> constructor to convert the string[] into a List<String>. This does not require LINQ.

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

public class Example

{

public static void Main()

{

string s = "red,blue,green";

List<string> tokens = new List<string>(s.Split(','));

Console.WriteLine(String.Join(", ", tokens)); // red, blue, green

}

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The above solution returns a list of strings. If you need to convert the list of strings to another data type, say integer, you can use LINQ’s Select() method.

using System;

using System.Linq;

using System.Collections.Generic;

public class Example

{

public static void Main()

{

string s = "1,2,3";

List<int> tokens = s.Split(',').Select(int.Parse).ToList();

Console.WriteLine(String.Join(", ", tokens)); // 1, 2, 3

}

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If you don’t want to use LINQ, try using the Array.ConvertAll() method for converting an array to a list of a different type. This translates to:

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

public class Example

{

public static void Main()

{

string s = "1,2,3";

List<int> tokens = new List<int>(Array.ConvertAll(s.Split(','), int.Parse));

Console.WriteLine(String.Join(", ", tokens)); // 1, 2, 3

}

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That’s all about converting a comma-separated string into a List in C#.

Convert comma separated string into a List in C#

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