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Use Linq to entities to filter on alpha and numeric values

I have the following code in my method

MyListViewModel viewModel = new MyListViewModel {
MyList= repository.MyList
.Where(m=> alphaFilter == (string)null || m.Title.StartsWith(alphaFilter))

this filters the list based on the first character in the string. It works perfectly if the value passed as alphaFilter matches the first character of a the m.title.

My problem is that i want an alpha character to filter on the same character, but i want to be able to pass a "#" character and retrieve all entries that start with a numeric value.

in other words, i want my select list of alphaFilter characters to look like this...

# A B C D
not
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 A B C D

I know there is probably an easy solution, but i'm having trouble finding it. Any help would be much appreciated

kmitch62Asked: 2012-03-20

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LVL 58

amit_gCommented: 2012-03-20

What is alphaFilter and how you are populating it. It seems to be string. If so, the posted code won't work if it has more than one characters i.e. alphaFilter = "A" would work but alphaFilter = "AB" won't. Have you tested it for that?

For the digits, you could always do

alphaFilter = alphaFilter.Replace("#", "1234567890");

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and then it would work if the rest of the code works.

string alphaFilter = "AB#";
alphaFilter = alphaFilter.Replace("#", "1234567890");

.Where(m=> alphaFilter == null || alphaFilter.Contains(m.Title.Substring(0, 1)))

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kmitch62Author Commented: 2012-03-20

it was being populated by .Select(x=>x.Title.Substring(0,1) so there would only be one character. '#' is being added to the list at list[0]. that is the correct behavior.

as for the answer... that's exactly what i needed and I don't believe that i didn't see it myself. Like i said, a simple answer that i was just missing. Thanks for the help.