[c#] Concat all strings inside a List<string> using LINQ

Is there any easy LINQ expression to concatenate my entire List<string> collection items to a single string with a delimiter character?

What if the collection is of custom objects instead of string? Imagine I need to concatenate on object.Name.

You can simply use:

List<string> items = new List<string>() { "foo", "boo", "john", "doe" };

Console.WriteLine(string.Join(",", items));

Happy coding!

List<string> strings = new List<string>() { "ABC", "DEF", "GHI" };
string s = strings.Aggregate((a, b) => a + ',' + b);

Put String.Join into an extension method. Here is the version I use, which is less verbose than Jordaos version.

• returns empty string "" when list is empty. Aggregate would throw exception instead.
• probably better performance than Aggregate
• is easier to read when combined with other LINQ methods than a pure String.Join()

Usage

var myStrings = new List<string>() { "a", "b", "c" };
var joinedStrings = myStrings.Join(",");  // "a,b,c"

Extensionmethods class

public static class ExtensionMethods
{
    public static string Join(this IEnumerable<string> texts, string separator)
    {
        return String.Join(separator, texts);
    }
}

Good question. I've been using

List<string> myStrings = new List<string>{ "ours", "mine", "yours"};
string joinedString = string.Join(", ", myStrings.ToArray());

It's not LINQ, but it works.

I have done this using LINQ:

var oCSP = (from P in db.Products select new { P.ProductName });

string joinedString = string.Join(",", oCSP.Select(p => p.ProductName));

You can use Aggregate, to concatenate the strings into a single, character separated string but will throw an Invalid Operation Exception if the collection is empty.

You can use Aggregate function with a seed string.

var seed = string.Empty;
var seperator = ",";

var cars = new List<string>() { "Ford", "McLaren Senna", "Aston Martin Vanquish"};

var carAggregate = cars.Aggregate(seed,
                (partialPhrase, word) => $"{partialPhrase}{seperator}{word}").TrimStart(',');

you can use string.Join doesn’t care if you pass it an empty collection.

var seperator = ",";

var cars = new List<string>() { "Ford", "McLaren Senna", "Aston Martin Vanquish"};

var carJoin = string.Join(seperator, cars);

I think that if you define the logic in an extension method the code will be much more readable:

public static class EnumerableExtensions { 
  public static string Join<T>(this IEnumerable<T> self, string separator) {  
    return String.Join(separator, self.Select(e => e.ToString()).ToArray()); 
  } 
} 

public class Person {  
  public string FirstName { get; set; }  
  public string LastName { get; set; }  
  public override string ToString() {
    return string.Format("{0} {1}", FirstName, LastName);
  }
}  

// ...

List<Person> people = new List<Person>();
// ...
string fullNames = people.Join(", ");
string lastNames = people.Select(p => p.LastName).Join(", ");

String.Join(delimiter, list);

is sufficient.

This is for a string array:

string.Join(delimiter, array);

This is for a List<string>:

string.Join(delimiter, list.ToArray());

And this is for a list of custom objects:

string.Join(delimiter, list.Select(i => i.Boo).ToArray());

using System.Linq;

public class Person
{
  string FirstName { get; set; }
  string LastName { get; set; }
}

List<Person> persons = new List<Person>();

string listOfPersons = string.Join(",", persons.Select(p => p.FirstName));