Is it possible to compare “North, South, East” and “North, East, South” and find equivalence?

Question

Is it possible to compare two strings such as:

"North, South, East" == "North, East, South" 

and find equivalence, based on the fact that

both contain "North"

or

both contain "South"

Another example

"North" == "North, South"

Also

"North" != "South"

Obviously the comma seperates the key strings for comparison. Not sure if there is a key function in C# that could help with this? "Contains" will not work, as the order of the delimited values could be different, ie

"North, South" == "South, North"

Any help with this would be gratefully accepted. Looking for some expert C# guidance!

Answer 1

Use String.Split to get a string[] from the String where each token is separated by a delimiter, for example the comma:

var tokens1 = "North, South, East".Split(',').Select(s => s.Trim());
var tokens2 = "North, East, South".Split(',').Select(s => s.Trim());

I have used Enumerable.Select to remove leading or trailing spaces with String.Trim . Now you can use Intersect + Any to check if there's a common intersection:

bool anyIntersection = tokens1.Intersect(tokens2).Any();

Answer 2

You can write it using Any() this way:

string NEWS = "North, South, East";
string NEW = "North, East, South";

var temp1 = NEWS.Split(',');
var temp2 = NEW.Split(',');

if (temp1.Any(x => temp2.Contains(x)))
{
 // means equal
}

Answer 3

Do you mean something like this, which prints "Strings in common: South, East"

string s1 = "North, South, East";
string s2 = "East, West, South";

var strings1 = s1.Split(',').Select(s => s.Trim());
var strings2 = s2.Split(',').Select(s => s.Trim());

var stringsInCommon = strings1.Intersect(strings2);

Console.WriteLine("Strings in common: " + string.Join(", ", stringsInCommon));