In order to simplify your code, it is a good idea to better separate the tasks. For instance, it will be much easier to handle the contents of string array 1 after you have converted the contents into objects, e.g.
class NotServedMenu
{
public string Menu { get; set; }
public bool NotServed { get; set; }
public string AlternateMenu { get; set; }
}
Instead of having an array of strings, you can read the strings to a list first:
private IEnumerable<NotServedMenu> NotServedMenusFromStrings(IEnumerable<string> strings)
{
return (from x in strings select ParseNotServedMenuFromString(x)).ToArray();
}
private NotServedMenu ParseNotServedMenuFromString(string str)
{
var parts = str.Split('|');
// Validate
if (parts.Length != 3)
throw new ArgumentException(string.Format("Unable to parse \"{0}\" to an object of type {1}", str, typeof(NotServedMenu).FullName));
bool notServedVal;
if (!bool.TryParse(parts[1], out notServedVal))
throw new ArgumentException(string.Format("Unable to read bool value from \"{0}\" in string \"{1}\".", parts[1], str));
// Create object
return new NotServedMenu() { Menu = parts[0],
NotServed = notServedVal,
AlternateMenu = parts[2] };
}
Once you can use the objects, the subsequent code will be much cleaner to read:
var notServedMenusStr = new[]
{
"Burger|True|Sandwich",
"Pizza|True|Hot Dog"
};
var notServedMenus = NotServedMenusFromStrings(notServedMenusStr);
var menus = new[]
{
"Burger",
"Pizza",
"Grill Chicken",
"Pasta"
};
var alternateMenus = (from m in menus join n in notServedMenus on m equals n.Menu select n);
foreach(var m in alternateMenus)
Console.WriteLine("{0}, {1}, {2}", m.Menu, m.NotServed, m.AlternateMenu);
In this sample, I've used a Linq join to find the matching items.
