C# Sortable collection which allows duplicate keys

Question

I am writing a program to set a sequence in which various objects will appear in report. The sequence is the Y position (cell) on Excel spreadsheet.

A demo part of co

Answer 1

Use your own IComparer!

Like already stated in some other answers, you should use your own comparer class. For this sake I use a generic IComparer class, that works with anything that implements IComparable:

/// 

/// Comparer for comparing two keys, handling equality as beeing greater
/// Use this Comparer e.g. with SortedLists or SortedDictionaries, that don't allow duplicate keys
/// 
/// 
public class DuplicateKeyComparer
                :
             IComparer where TKey : IComparable
{
    #region IComparer Members

    public int Compare(TKey x, TKey y)
    {
        int result = x.CompareTo(y);

        if (result == 0)
            return 1;   // Handle equality as beeing greater
        else
            return result;
    }

    #endregion
}

You will use it when instancing a new SortedList, SortedDictionary etc:

SortedList slist = new SortedList(new DuplicateKeyComparer());

Here int is the key that can be duplicate.