How to search in a Arraylist

I created an arr开发者_开发百科aylist of Student type. Student has name, subject information in it. Suppose my ArrayList has values like (sam, maths), (john, english), (mat, science). If i want to find out which student has science stream, then how to search it in an ArrayList.

I think it may be done by using binarysearch or indexof methods, but not getting it right.

Why did you created an arraylist of Student type ?

I'm pretty sure that you should go with a generic type-safe list : List<T>

To do your searches you could use LINQ :

List<Student> students = new List<Student>();
students.Add(new Student { Lastname = "Smith" });
students.Add(new Student { Lastname = "Foo" });
students.Add(new Student { Lastname = "SmithFoo" });
students.Add(new Student { Lastname = "SmithBar" });

var searchResults = from student in students
     where student.Lastname.StartsWith("Smith")
     select student;

This code will search in your students list and return three students : Smith, SmithFoo and SmithBar

Thats how I did in the end. Sorry I forgot to answer this one.

  public int search(object sender, List<albums> al)
    {
        int i = -1;
        TextBox txt = (TextBox)sender;
        foreach (albums dc in al)
        {
            if ((dc.artist == txt) ||(dc.tag == txt))
            {
                i = (al.IndexOf(dc));
            }
        }
        return i;
    }