Alternative to if, else if

Question

I have a lot of if, else if statements and I know there has to be a better way to do this but even after searching stackoverflow I\'m unsure of how to do so in my particular cas

Answer 1

Since you seem to need to search for the key before returning the value a Dictionary is the right way to go, but you will need to loop over it.

// dictionary to hold mappings
Dictionary mapping = new Dictionary();
// add your mappings here
// loop over the keys
foreach (KeyValuePair item in mapping)
{
    // return value if key found
    if(txtvar.BillText.IndexOf(item.Key) > -1) {
        return item.Value;
    }
}

EDIT: If you wish to have control over the order in which elemnts are evaluated, use an OrderedDictionary and add the elements in the order in which you want them evaluated.