Roman numerals to integers

Question

I have a transfer with products that unfortunately has to get matched by product name. The biggest issue here is I might get duplicate products on account of roman numbers. Sometimes the same product will be named with a roman number, other times it will be a regular one.

The products are mobile gadgets. Example - Samsung Galaxy SII - Samsung Galaxy S2

How could one write such a function?

Answer 1

I've noticed some really complicated solutions here but this is a really simple problem. I made a solution that avoided the need to hard code the "exceptions" (IV, IX, XL, etc). I used a for loop to look ahead at the next character in the Roman numeral string to see if the number associated with the numeral should be subtracted or added to the total. For simplicity's sake I'm assuming all input is valid.

private static Dictionary<char, int> RomanMap = new Dictionary<char, int>()
    {
        {'I', 1},
        {'V', 5},
        {'X', 10},
        {'L', 50},
        {'C', 100},
        {'D', 500},
        {'M', 1000}
    };

public static int RomanToInteger(string roman)
{
    int number = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < roman.Length; i++)
    {
        if (i + 1 < roman.Length && RomanMap[roman[i]] < RomanMap[roman[i + 1]])
        {
            number -= RomanMap[roman[i]];
        }
        else
        {
            number += RomanMap[roman[i]];
        }
    }
    return number;
}

I initially tried using a foreach on the string which I think was a slightly more readable solution but I ended up adding every single number and subtracting it twice later if it turned out to be one of the exceptions, which I didn't like. I'll post it here anyway for posterity.

public static int RomanToInteger(string roman)
{
    int number = 0;
    char previousChar = roman[0];
    foreach(char currentChar in roman)
    {
        number += RomanMap[currentChar];
        if(RomanMap[previousChar] < RomanMap[currentChar])
        {
            number -= RomanMap[previousChar] * 2;
        }
        previousChar = currentChar;
    }
    return number;
}