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

The trick is to augment your object with a unique key. See the following test which passes. I want to keep my points sorted by their X value. Just using a naked Point2D in my comparison function will cause points with the same X value to be eliminated. So I wrap the Point2D in a tagging class called Indexed.

[Fact]
public void ShouldBeAbleToUseCustomComparatorWithSortedSet()
{
    // Create comparer that compares on X value but when X
    // X values are uses the index
    var comparer = new 
        System.Linq.Comparer>(( p0, p1 ) =>
        {
            var r = p0.Value.X.CompareTo(p1.Value.X);
            return r == 0 ? p0.Index.CompareTo(p1.Index) : r;
        });

    // Sort points according to X
    var set = new SortedSet>(comparer);

    int i=0;

    // Create a helper function to wrap each point in a unique index
    Action index = p =>
    {
        var ip = Indexed.Create(i++, p);
        set.Add(ip);
    };

    index(new Point2D(9,10));
    index(new Point2D(1,25));
    index(new Point2D(11,-10));
    index(new Point2D(2,99));
    index(new Point2D(5,55));
    index(new Point2D(5,23));
    index(new Point2D(11,11));
    index(new Point2D(21,12));
    index(new Point2D(-1,76));
    index(new Point2D(16,21));
    set.Count.Should()
       .Be(10);
    var xs = set.Select(p=>p.Value.X).ToList();
    xs.Should()
      .BeInAscendingOrder();
    xs.ShouldBeEquivalentTo(new[]{-1,1,2,5,5,9,11,11,16,21});

}

Utilities to make this work are

A comparer that takes a lambda

public class Comparer : IComparer
{
    private readonly Func _comparer;

    public Comparer(Func comparer)
    {
        if (comparer == null)
            throw new ArgumentNullException("comparer");
        _comparer = comparer;
    }

    public int Compare(T x, T y)
    {
        return _comparer(x, y);
    }
}

A tagging struct

public struct Indexed
{
    public int Index { get; private set; }
    public T Value { get; private set; }
    public Indexed(int index, T value) : this()
    {
        Index = index;
        Value = value;
    }

    public override string ToString()
    {
        return "(Indexed: " + Index + ", " + Value.ToString () + " )";
    }
}

public class Indexed
{
    public static Indexed Create(int indexed, T value)
    {
        return new Indexed(indexed, value);
    }
}