define a List like List<int,string>?

Depending on your needs, you have a few options here.

If you don't need to do key/value lookups and want to stick with a List<>, you can make use of Tuple<int, string>:

List<Tuple<int, string>> mylist = new List<Tuple<int, string>>();

// add an item
mylist.Add(new Tuple<int, string>(someInt, someString));

If you do want key/value lookups, you could move towards a Dictionary<int, string>:

Dictionary<int, string> mydict = new Dictionary<int, string>();

// add an item
mydict.Add(someInt, someString);

You could use an immutable struct

public struct Data
{
    public Data(int intValue, string strValue)
    {
        IntegerData = intValue;
        StringData = strValue;
    }

    public int IntegerData { get; private set; }
    public string StringData { get; private set; }
}

var list = new List<Data>();

Or a KeyValuePair<int, string>

using Data = System.Collections.Generic.KeyValuePair<int, string>
...
var list = new List<Data>();
list.Add(new Data(12345, "56789"));

With the new ValueTuple from C# 7 (VS 2017 and above), there is a new solution:

List<(int,string)> mylist= new List<(int,string)>();

Which creates a list of ValueTuple type. If you're targeting .Net Framework 4.7+ or .Net Core, it's native, otherwise you have to get the ValueTuple package from nuget.

It's a struct opposing to Tuple, which is a class. It also has the advantage over the Tuple class that you could create a named tuple, like this:

var mylist = new List<(int myInt, string myString)>();

That way you can access like mylist[0].myInt and mylist[0].myString

Tags:

C#

.Net