Converting a generic list to a CSV string

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It’s amazing what the Framework already does for us.

List<int> myValues;
string csv = String.Join(",", myValues.Select(x => x.ToString()).ToArray());

For the general case:

IEnumerable<T> myList;
string csv = String.Join(",", myList.Select(x => x.ToString()).ToArray());

As you can see, it’s effectively no different. Beware that you might need to actually wrap x.ToString() in quotes (i.e., "\"" + x.ToString() + "\"") in case x.ToString() contains commas.

For an interesting read on a slight variant of this: see Comma Quibbling on Eric Lippert’s blog.

Note: This was written before .NET 4.0 was officially released. Now we can just say

IEnumerable<T> sequence;
string csv = String.Join(",", sequence);

using the overload String.Join<T>(string, IEnumerable<T>). This method will automatically project each element x to x.ToString().

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