c# equivalent to php associative array?

Question

hi

ive decided to learn c# recently. ive done some php before. i see c# has dictionaries. thats equivalent to an associative array in php right? as far as i can tell the dictionary doesnt maintain insertion order like php associative arrays right? is there some other equivalent i should use if insertion order is important?

thanks

Answer 1

Dictionary doesn't guarantee to preserve insertion order, so no: you can't rely on that (although it is hard to force it to break this). If insertion order is important, you would need to create a hybrid class, perhaps encapsulating a List<T> for the inserted order, and a Dictionary<TKey,T> for the indexing.

Answer 2

You might want to check out Power Collections. I believe they have implementations that would suit your needs.

HTH, Kent

Answer 3

There is an OrderedDictionary class in the System.Collections.Specialized namespace, but it's unfortunately not generic.

There is no built-in, generic dictionary class that preserves insertion order. If insertion order is really important, you'll have to roll your own or check out a third party implementation (as Marc & Kent suggested).