Best implementation for Key Value Pair Data Structure

Question

So I ve been poking around with C  a bit lately  and all the Generic Collections have me a little confused  Say I wanted to represent a data structure where the head of a tree was a key value pair  and then there is one optional list of key value pairs below that  but no more levels than these   Would this be suitable   public class TokenTree       public TokenTree                    I must admit to not fully understanding this             I got it from msdn  As far as I can tell  IDictionary is an            interface  and Dictionary is the default implementation of            that interface  right                      SubPairs   new Dictionary lt string  string gt                public string Key      public string Value      public IDictionary lt string  string gt  SubPairs      It s only really a simple shunt for passing around data

User · Answer

Use something like this     class Tree  lt  T  gt    Dictionary  lt  T  IList lt  Tree  lt  T  gt   gt   gt              It s ugly  but I think it will give you what you want  Too bad KeyValuePair is sealed

User · Answer

There is a KeyValuePair built-in type  As a matter of fact  this is what the IDictionary is giving you access to when you iterate in it   Also  this structure is hardly a tree  finding a more representative name might be a good exercise

User · Answer

I think what you might be after  as a literal implementation of your question   is   public class TokenTree       public TokenTree                 tree   new Dictionary lt string  IDictionary lt string string gt  gt                IDictionary lt string  IDictionary lt string  string gt  gt  tree       You did actually say a  list  of key-values in your question  so you might want to swap the inner IDictionary with a   IList lt KeyValuePair lt string  string gt  gt

User · Answer

There is an actual Data Type called KeyValuePair  use like this  KeyValuePair lt string  string gt  myKeyValuePair   new KeyValuePair lt string string gt   defaultkey    defaultvalue

User · Answer

Just one thing to add to this  although I do think you have already had your question answered by others   In the interests of extensibility  since we all know it will happen at some point  you may want to check out the Composite Pattern This is ideal for working with  Tree-Like Structures     Like I said  I know you are only expecting one sub-level  but this could really be useful for you if you later need to extend

User · Answer

Dictionary Class is exactly what you want  correct   You can declare the field directly as Dictionary  instead of IDictionary  but that s up to you

User · Answer

Jay Mooney  A generic Dictionary class in  NET is actually a hash table  just with fixed types   The code you ve shown shouldn t convince anyone to use Hashtable instead of Dictionary  since both code pieces can be used for both types   For hashtable   foreach object key in h keys         string keyAsString   key ToString       btw  this is unnecessary      string valAsString   h key  ToString          System Diagnostics Debug WriteLine keyAsString         valAsString       For dictionary   foreach string key in d keys         string valAsString   d key  ToString          System Diagnostics Debug WriteLine key         valAsString       And just the same for the other one with KeyValuePair  just use the non-generic version for Hashtable  and the generic version for Dictionary   So it s just as easy both ways  but Hashtable uses Object for both key and value  which means you will box all value types  and you don t have type safety  and Dictionary uses generic types and is thus better

User · Answer

One possible thing you could do is use the Dictionary object straight out of the box and then just extend it with your own modifications   public class TokenTree   Dictionary lt string  string gt        public IDictionary lt string  string gt  SubPairs      This gives you the advantage of not having to enforce the rules of IDictionary for your Key  e g   key uniqueness  etc    And yup you got the concept of the constructor right

[c#] Best implementation for Key Value Pair Data Structure?

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