LINQ - selecting second item in IEnumerable

Jon picture Jon · Sep 13, 2010 · Viewed 67.8k times · Source

I have

string[] pkgratio= "1:2:6".Split(':');

var items = pkgratio.OrderByDescending(x => x);

I want to select the middle value and have come up with this. Is this a correct way to select the second value in an IEnumberable?

pkgratio.Skip(1).Take(1).First();

Answer

Ahmad Mageed picture Ahmad Mageed · Sep 13, 2010

While what you have works, the most straightforward way would be to use the array's index and reference the second item (at index 1 since the index starts at zero for the first element): pkgratio[1]

Console.WriteLine(pkgratio[1]);

A more complete example:

string[] pkgratio = "1:2:6".Split(':');

for (int i = 0; i < pkgratio.Length; i++)
    Console.WriteLine(pkgratio[i]);

With an IEnumerable<T> what you have works, or you could directly get the element using the ElementAt method:

// same idea, zero index applies here too
var elem = result.ElementAt(1);

Here is your sample as an IEnumerable<string>. Note that the AsEnumerable() call is to emphasize the sample works against an IEnumerable<string>. You can actually use ElementAt against the string[] array result from Split, but it's more efficient to use the indexer shown earlier.

var pkgratio = "1:2:6".Split(':').AsEnumerable();
Console.WriteLine(pkgratio.ElementAt(1));