In C#: Add Quotes around string in a comma delimited list of strings

Question

This probably has a simple answer, but I must not have had enough coffee to figure it out on my own:

If I had a comma delimited string such as:

string list = "Fred,Sam,Mike,Sarah"; 

How would get each element and add quotes around it and stick it back in a string like this:

string newList = "'Fred','Sam','Mike','Sarah'"; 

I'm assuming iterating over each one would be a start, but I got stumped after that.

One solution that is ugly:

int number = 0; string newList = ""; foreach (string item in list.Split(new char[] {','})) {     if (number > 0)     {         newList = newList + "," + "'" + item + "'";     }     else     {         newList = "'" + item + "'";     }     number++; } 

Answer 1

string s = "A,B,C"; string replaced = "'"+s.Replace(",", "','")+"'"; 

Thanks for the comments, I had missed the external quotes.

Of course.. if the source was an empty string, would you want the extra quotes around it or not ? And what if the input was a bunch of whitespaces... ? I mean, to give a 100% complete solution I'd probably ask for a list of unit tests but I hope my gut instinct answered your core question.

Update: A LINQ-based alternative has also been suggested (with the added benefit of using String.Format and therefore not having to worry about leading/trailing quotes):

string list = "Fred,Sam,Mike,Sarah"; string newList = string.Join(",", list.Split(',').Select(x => string.Format("'{0}'", x)).ToList()); 

Answer 2

Following Jon Skeet's example above, this is what worked for me. I already had a List<String> variable called __messages so this is what I did:

string sep = String.Join(", ", __messages.Select(x => "'" + x + "'"));