Check if a string contains particular characters in any order

Question

The best way that I can explain what I'm trying to do is by giving an example:

I have a string StackOverflow in my database and when a user types OAW I would like to return that string and any other word that contains those three characters in any order.

I've tried playing with various LINQ/Lambda expressions but to no avail.

query.Where(a => a.SerialNumber.Contains(a));

I found a post here on SO that looks similar to mine but it's in Java.

I feel what I'm trying to do is extremely simple to implement but I'm just missing it. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You could try something like this:

query.Where(str => value.All(str.SerialNumber.Contains));

Here for any word in your database, you check if all the characters of the value, OAW, -Using the All extension method- are contained in the str.SerialNumber.

Update

This

str.SerialNumber.Contains

is equivalent to this lambda expression:

x => str.SerialNumber.Contains(x)

The x refers to the random element of the sequence in which we apply the All. In other words to the random character of value.

Answer 2

You can use a ContainsAll type of function.

public static bool ContainsAllItems(IEnumerable<T> a, IEnumerable<T> b)
{
    return !b.Except(a).Any();
}

NOTE

The function was borrowed from here