C# dictionary vs 2D array-CodePudding

I have an Excel sheet with 5000 rows * 30 columns, and I want to read them into a C# program and then access the values regularly by looking up both the row and column headers. the program will be run on a normal laptop (16GB ram). Should I use a Dictionary of Dictionaries to store this data? If so, is it more advisable to create a dictionary of 5000 smaller dictionaries each with 30 key-value pairs (ie, row headers will be the key of the "outer" dictionary, and column header will be the key of the "inner" dictionary) or 30 dictionaries each with 5000 key-value pairs? or should I create a 2D array, and store the row headers & row index pair and column headers & column index pair in 2 smaller dictionaries? or do I need to be worried about the memory/performance issues at all for this amount of data?

Thank you.

CodePudding user response：

According to

You can create a class which would represent one object (one entity):

public class Person
{
}

and fill it with Properties, which would be similar for each entity (your 30 columns):

public class Person
{ 
    public string Name { get; set;}
    public string Surname { get; set;}
    public int Age { get; set;}
    public string City { get; set;}
    public string Gender { get; set;}
    // and other of 30 columns
}

So, each row in table represents some Person (in that example). 5000 rows = we would have 5000 Persons. As they are similar entities - we can store them as collection or Persons. We can use (for simple example):

Person[] - array of Persons;
List<Person> - list of Persons;

Let's imagine, how to read data from table and create a List of Persons from it.

public void ReadTable(Table myTable) // We have Table with Rows and Columns
{ 
    // Initializing our collection of Persons
    List<Person> persons = new List<Person>;

    // We need to read all 5000 rows, so iterating them
    for (int i = 1; i <= myTable.Rows.Count; i  ) // myTable.Rows.Count = 5000
    {
        // Creating a Person
        Person person = new Person(); 
        
        // Reading each cell value, accessing to it through RowIndex & ColumnIndex 

        // Row 1 Column 1 is Name 
        string name = myTable.Rows[i].Columns[1].Value.ToString(); // John
        // Row 1 Column 2 is Surname
        string surname = myTable.Rows[i].Columns[2].Value.ToString(); // Wick
        // Row 1 Column 3 is Age
        int age = int.Parse(myTable.Rows[i].Columns[3].Value); // 55  
        // Row 1 Column 4 is City
        string city = myTable.Rows[i].Columns[4].Value.ToString(); // New York 
        // Row 1 Column 5 is Gender
        string gender = myTable.Rows[i].Columns[5].Value.ToString(); // Male

        //Received from table values we add to a Person:
        person.Name = name;
        person.Surname = surname;
        person.Age = age;
        person.City = city;
        person.Gender = gender;
   
        // And finally adding Person to a collection (list) of Persons:
        persons.Add(person);

        // And same would happen with other 5000 rows                    
   }
}

So after reading you will have persons list with 5000 items. You can manipulate them, edit, add new and remove existing - whatever.