Best way to create and store a categorized dictionary

Question

The dificulty I'm facing is as follows: I need to create a dictionary with something like 10 main definitions in it. What I actually need is to be able to recognize some X amount of strings that should represent one certain string. I want to have like 10 main strings and to be able to add different representative string to each one of them. Example: I have the strings "animal", "fruit" and "object" and I want to assing e.g. the strings "dog", "cat" and "snake" to the string "animal". The point is that everytime I face one of those strings, I'll want replace it with "animal". I imagine this as some kind of dictionary and I've read the documentary about this class in c#, but I'm not quite sure it's the best method so that's why I'm asking you. My idea was to create a new entry each time I face one of the substrings and to set that substring (e.g. "dog") as a key with value - the main string (in this case "animal"), but I find it quite inappropriate. Following question - could you suggest a good enough method to store the data from that "dictionary" locally/online, so that I can collect data troughout the time I'm using my code. Thanks a lot, friendly members of this community! :D

Answer 1

If I understand correctly, you can just use a dictionary:

var d = new Dictionary();
d.Add("dog", "animal");
....


d["dog"]; //this gives you animal.

You can do this with each item you want to replace, and the dictionary will give you its replacement value.

Answer 2

What would be best in your case would be to inverse your logic. You should use a Dictionary with a string a key and List as value and retrieve the value using the key which is a member of your list.

var d = new Dictionary<string,List<string>>();
d.Add("Animal", new List("Dog","Cat");
d.FirstOrDefault(x => x.Value.Contains("Cat")).Key;