Sort Dictionary (string, int) by value

Question

So basically I'm having an issue with the task I've been given. I won't bore you with the details of the task itself so I'll just give you the relevant info.

I have a dictionary that I need to be sorted by the int[value] that is the highest, well the top five highest to be precise and I need to be able to show the bottom five as well.

Dictionary<string, int> dict = new Dictionary<string, int>();

The strings(keys) hold words that have been read for a text file. The ints (values) hold ints of how many times they were mentioned in the document.

I was going to do it in another way but I was told to do it with a dictionary so please dictionary only help. I would appreciate it if you can explain how it should be done so I can learn as well as complete the task as the aim of the task is to educate myself but I'm finding it a bit hard..

I appreciate all your help in advance, if more info is required please let me know and I'll post it!

Answer 1

Dictionaries do not have any inherent order. But if you want to get the top 5 entries with highest (or lowest) values, you can use a little Linq:

using System.Linq;

...

var top5 = dict.OrderByDescending(pair => pair.Value).Take(5);
var bottom5 = dict.OrderBy(pair => pair.Value).Take(5);

This will return an IEnumerable<KeyValuePair<string, int>>. To turn it back into a dictionary, again Linq can help. For example:

var top5 = dict.OrderByDescending(pair => pair.Value).Take(5)
               .ToDictionary(pair => pair.Key, pair => pair.Value);

Now, top5 is a Dictionary<string, int> which contains only the 5 elements from dict with the hightest value.