Finding the degree of disorder between two dictionaries

Question

I cant wrap my head around this problem.

I have two dictionaries with the same keys. However the second dictionary is mixed up and the keys are in a different order. I want to be able to calculate how far each key in the new dictionary is away from its original position in the first dictionary.

Eg: Key 1 was moved to key 3 (in the second dictionary) so the disorder would be 2

Answer 1

As far as I know there is no built-in method to do this.But you can use this method to get index differences between two dictionary items (by keys).

public static int GetIndexDifference(IDictionary source, IDictionary target, object key)
{
    int index1=0, index2=0;
    int currentPosition = 1;
    foreach (var element in source.Keys)
    {
        if (element.Equals(key))
        {
            index1 = currentPosition;
            break;
         }
         currentPosition++;
     }
     currentPosition = 1;
     foreach (var element in target.Keys)
     {
         if (element.Equals(key))
         {
            index2 = currentPosition;
            break;
         }
         currentPosition++;
     }

        return Math.Abs(index1 - index2);
}

You can use it like this:

var dict1 = new Dictionary<string, string> {{"sample1", "some item"}, {"sample2", "some item"}};

var dict2 = new Dictionary<string, string> {  { "sample2", "some item" },{ "sample1", "some item" }, };

Console.WriteLine(GetIndexDifference(dict1,dict2,"sample1"));

Or you can use it with LINQ:

var disOrders =  dict1.Select(item => GetIndexDifference(dict1, dict2, item.Key)).ToList();

It will give you all disOrders count as a List<int>