Turn list to an array

Code:

---

Private Sub CheckButton_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles CheckButton.Click
        For i = 1 To 58112          '58112 is the amount of words im checking against
            If LCase(word) = LCase(arrwords(i)) Then
                MsgBox("it is a word")
                totalscore = totalscore + checkscore
                ListWM.Items.Add(word)  'words made so far
            End If
        Next

        TextScore.Text = totalscore
        ResetButton.PerformClick()
end sub

---

So i am making a boggle type game where you have 7 tiles and you have to make as many words as you can. I can check against the words in the dictionary just fine.
I need help making an array of Words Made so far and making sure the user doesnt use the same word twice. I am kinda new to VB.Net and i dont know hot to convert a list to an array

There doesn't seem to be a reason to create an array if you already have a List. That said, if you use a HashSet instead then that solves all your problems. A HashSet doesn't allow duplicates and it's Add method will return False if you try. So, create a HashSet(Of String) and the call its Add method to add each word. If that returns False then the word was not added because it's already in the list.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jmcilhinney

There doesn't seem to be a reason to create an array if you already have a List. That said, if you use a HashSet instead then that solves all your problems. A HashSet doesn't allow duplicates and it's Add method will return False if you try. So, create a HashSet(Of String) and the call its Add method to add each word. If that returns False then the word was not added because it's already in the list.

---

i have never used a hash set before but ill go look it up! thanks man!

Using a HashSet is almost exactly the same as using a List. The only real difference is what I've already mentioned, so there's really very little to learn. It might be worth your while to peruse the System.Collections namespace and its children to see what sorts of collections are available. There's a number that provide useful functionality for particular situations. Just note that most of what you will use these days are in System.Collections.Generic or, for deriving your own types, System.Collections.ObjectModel.

This is how I would have done it (before hearing about HashSet).

Code:

---

dim ListOfUsedWords as New List(Of String)

Private Sub CheckIfWordHasAlreadyBeenUsed(Word as string)

if ListOfUsedWords.Contains(Word) then
  msgbox("WORD ALREADY USED")
else
  ListOfUsedWords.add(Word)
end if

---

Didn't know about the existance of HashSet, out of curiousity I read up a bit, turns out they're actually considerably faster than List<of T> too.

Because a HashSet is constrained to contain only unique entries, the internal structure is optimised for searching (compared with a list) - it is considerably faster

A HashSet<T> is a class designed to give you O(1) lookup for containment

Interesting.