Finding the latest date in XmlNode using string[]

Question

I am looping through an XmlNodeList and getting the date of the nodes creation in a string[]. For example:

date[0] = 2016 //year
date[1] = 07 //month
date[2] = 23 //day

My question is, what would be the most efficient way of comparing this string[] to another string[], to find the which one has the latest date? I could do it with a bunch of if statements comparing each element to one another, but feel that isn't the best/prettiest solution. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You could use ParseExact to create a DateTime out of the string[]. Then order by it:

List<string[]> data = new List<string[]>
{ 
    new string[] { "2016", "07", "23" }, 
    new string[] { "2017", "01", "01" } 
};

var latestTime = data.OrderByDescending(item => 
                         DateTime.ParseExact(string.Join("/", item), @"yyyy/MM/dd", null))
                     .FirstOrDefault();

//latestTime = 1/1/2017