Check if list contains element that contains a string and get that element

Question

While searching for an answer to this question, I\'ve run into similar ones utilizing LINQ but I haven\'t been able to fully understand them (and thus, implement them), as I

Answer 1

It is possible to combine Any, Where, First and FirstOrDefault; or just place the predicate in any of those methods depending on what is needed.

You should probably avoid using First unless you want to have an exception thrown when no match is found. FirstOrDefault is usually the better option as long as you know it will return the type's default if no match is found (string's default is null, int is 0, bool is false, etc).

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;


bool exists;
string firstMatch;
IEnumerable matchingList;

var myList = new List() { "foo", "bar", "foobar" };

exists = myList.Any(x => x.Contains("o"));
// exists => true

firstMatch = myList.FirstOrDefault(x => x.Contains("o"));
firstMatch = myList.First(x => x.Contains("o"));
// firstMatch => "foo"

firstMatch = myList.First(x => x.Contains("dark side"));
// throws exception because no element contains "dark side"

firstMatch = myList.FirstOrDefault(x => x.Contains("dark side"));
// firstMatch => null

matchingList = myList.Where(x => x.Contains("o")); 
// matchingList => { "foo", "foobar" }

Test this code @ https://rextester.com/TXDL57489