Get string from array or set default value in a one liner

Question

So we have ?? to parse its right-hand value for when the left hand is null. What is the equivalent for a string[].

For example

string value = "One - Two"
string firstValue = value.Split('-')[0] ?? string.Empty;
string secondValue = value.Split('-')[1] ?? string.Empty;

Above example would still crash if we would try to get a third index or if string value = "One". Because it is not null but IndexOutOfRangeException is thrown.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.indexoutofrangeexception

So what is a one-line solution to tackle the above problem? I'd like to avoid the try-catch scenario because this gives ugly code.

I want to get value out of a string[] with a string.Empty as a backup value so my string is never null.

Answer 1

Well, you can try Linq:

using System.Linq;

...

string thirdValue = value.Split('-').ElementAtOrDefault(2) ?? string.Empty;

However, your code has a drawback: you constantly Split the same string. I suggest extracting value.Split('-'):

string value = "One - Two"
var items = value.Split('-');

string firstValue = items.ElementAtOrDefault(0) ?? string.Empty;
string secondValue = items.ElementAtOrDefault(1) ?? string.Empty;

Answer 2

I suggest you create a method for this. which will accept two inputs of type string(representing the input string) and an integer(represents the specified index), and should return the split value if the specified index is available, else it will return an empty string:

string GetSubstring(string input, int index)
{
    string returnValue = String.Empty;
    string[] substrings = input.Split(new[] { "-" }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
    returnValue = substrings.Length > index ? substrings[index] : returnValue;
    return returnValue;
}

Here is a working example for your reference