How to do "like" on dictionary key?

Question

How can I do a "like" to find a dictionary key? I'm currently doing:

mydict.ContainsKey(keyName);

But some keyNames have an additional word appended (separated by a space), I'd like to do a "like" or .StartsWith(). The comparisons will look like this:

"key1" == "key1"  //match
"key1" == "key1 someword" //partial match

I need to match in both cases.

Answer 1

You can use LINQ to do this.

Here are two examples:

bool anyStartsWith = mydict.Keys.Any(k => k.StartsWith("key1"))

bool anyContains = mydict.Keys.Any(k => k.Contains("key1"))

It is worth pointing out that this method will have worse performance than the .ContainsKey method, but depending on your needs, the performance hit will not be noticable.

Answer 2

mydict.Keys.Any(k => k.StartsWith("key1"));

While enumerating over the Keys you will lose the performance benefits of a dictionary:

mydict.ContainsKey(someKey); // O(1)
mydict.Keys.Any(k => k.StartsWith("key1")); // O(n)