CompetitiveCSharp

If you participate in programming contests and use C# then you are probably a bit tired of the C# input features. Basically you need to parse and convert all input data by yourself. This template contains ConsoleReader class that simplifies the data input process. You can copy and paste the template into you solution.

Read Single Value

To read data like this

12
astring

the following code can be used.

var n = Read<int>();
var s = Read<string>();

Every call of the Read method skips whitespace symbols, gets all non whitespace symbols until the new whitespace, and converts the sequence of the read characters into the type specified. Therefore, Read<string>() will not read a string with a space. Only the part before space will be read.

Read Array

If you need to read an array, you can use the ReadArray method.

var a = ReadArray<int>(5);

The code above is suitable to read data like this

2 6 3 100 34

This code is to read an array of strings

var a = ReadArray<string>(3);

The input can look like this

string1 string2 string3

Also it can look like this

string1
string2
string3

Typical Input For Contest Problem

N M
A1 A2 ... AN

This data can be read with the following code

var n = Read<int>();
var m = Read<int>();
var a = ReadArray<int>(n);

Supported Types

Every standard type that implements IConvertible is supported.

Other Improvements

If you do not like to write for loops, you can try to use the Times method implemented in the template.

n.Times(i => Console.WriteLine(i));

And the same for nested loops

(n, m).Times((i, j) => Console.WriteLine($"{i} {j}"));

Final Note

Do not use Read and ReadArray together with methods from the standard Console class. Some whitespace can be lost.