c# - 'Smart' grouping with LINQ

Question

I have a list of strings and I want to convert it to some kind of grouped list, whereby the values would be grouped by their location in the list (not normal grouping, but in a way, that the same items are in a group only if they are together). Consider the following example:

LinkedList<string> myList = new LinkedList<string>();
myList.AddLast("aaa");
myList.AddLast("aaa");
myList.AddLast("bbb");
myList.AddLast("bbb");
myList.AddLast("aaa");
myList.AddLast("aaa");
myList.AddLast("aaa");

LinkedList<MyTuple> groupedList = new LinkedList<MyTuple>();
groupedList.AddLast(new MyTuple("aaa", 2));
groupedList.AddLast(new MyTuple("bbb", 2));
groupedList.AddLast(new MyTuple("aaa", 3));

Can this transformation be done with LINQ or should I write the algorithm usual way with loops?

Answer 1

The extension method from this answer does pretty much what you ask (Microsoft also provide an implementation to group contiguous items in a sequence):

public static IEnumerable<IGrouping<int, T>> 
    GroupConsecutive<T>(this IEnumerable<T> set, Func<T, T, bool> predicate)
{
    var i = 0;
    var k = 0;
    var ranges = from e in set
                 let idx = ++i
                 let next = set.ElementAtOrDefault(idx)
                 let key = (predicate(e, next)) ? k : k++
                 group e by key into g
                 select g;
    return ranges;
}

You could use it as follows:

void Main()
{
    LinkedList<string> myList = new LinkedList<string>();
    myList.AddLast("aaa");
    myList.AddLast("aaa");
    myList.AddLast("bbb");
    myList.AddLast("bbb");
    myList.AddLast("aaa");
    myList.AddLast("aaa");
    myList.AddLast("aaa");
    IGrouping<int,string> ggg;

    var groups=myList.GroupConsecutive((a,b)=>a==b);

    ILookup<string,int> lookup=groups.ToLookup(g=>g.First(),g=>g.Count());

    foreach(var x in lookup["aaa"])
    {
        Console.WriteLine(x); //outputs 2 then 3
    }
    foreach(var x in lookup["bbb"])
    {
        Console.WriteLine(x); //outputs 2
    }

}

Notice that the final container is an ILookup which behaves a little like a Dictionary, but allows one to store multiple values against a single key.