Is there a way to create a collection of collections?

[Proctor]

Is there a way to create a collection of collections?

e.g. I created a collection ListOf(Lines)
After I add all my lines to it, I want to store this colleciton in another listOf(Collections). The reason I want to do this is because i want to create several separate collections of lines and I'll need to loop through them all to look for a certain line and I thought this would be a good approach if it's possible.

i tried to create a listOf(Collection) but when i try to add my listOf(Lines) to it, it complains because the list is a colleciton of lines.

thanks,
Proctor

[techgnome]

List(Of List(Of Lines))

-tg

[Proctor]

A list of a list ....that's brilliant!!! I gave it a try and it works great!

thank you for your help!!

may i ask another quick question?
i want to build my collections of lines on the fly. e.g. the first i will be called colList1 and will be hard-coded like this:
dim colList1 as new listOf(lines)

then, when i need to start a new list of lines i wanted to do something like this in my code:

dim colList & "2" as new listOf(lines)

i haven't had any luck with this. do you also know if this is possible?

thanks again for showing me how to do a list of a list.....
Proctor

[techgnome]

nope... you can't do it like that... once you put your list in a list, you can assign a new list to your same variable... just make sure it is a a NEW list.

-tg

[dminder]

If you are adding a new list of lines to your collection then you would do this:

lst.Add(New List(of Lines))

There is no naming of items within your collection. You would have to use the Find function to find a match to whatever you are searching for or use iteration to go through each element and/or subelement (since your nesting collections).

Edit: unless you have a custom class that has a name property, then you can put your text, concatenated and all as its name!

If you are looking to declare a variable on the fly for use in code, I do not think that is not gonna happen. You cannot concatenate strings to create a variable name either. (ie Dim str & i as String where i is part of a For loop) You can however create controls or classes using the CType and/or DirectCast functions on the fly and name them as you please.

Hope that helps a little bit....

D

[techgnome]

If you are adding a new list of lines to your collection then you would do this:

lst.Add(New List(of Lines))

There is no naming of items within your collection. You would have to use the Find function to find a match to whatever you are searching for or use iteration to go through each element and/or subelement (since your nesting collections).

Edit: unless you have a custom class that has a name property, then you can put your text, concatenated and all as its name!

If you are looking to declare a variable on the fly for use in code, I do not think that is not gonna happen. You cannot concatenate strings to create a variable name either. (ie Dim str & i as String where i is part of a For loop) You can however create controls or classes using the CType and/or DirectCast functions on the fly and name them as you please.

Hope that helps a little bit....

D

There's also the Dictionary(Of String, List(Of Lines)) .... then you can give any string name as the key to each of your lists...

-tg