Creating a constant Dictionary in C#

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Creating a truly compile-time generated constant dictionary in C# is not really a straightforward task. Actually, none of the answers here really achieve that.

There is one solution though which meets your requirements, although not necessarily a nice one; remember that according to the C# specification, switch-case tables are compiled to constant hash jump tables. That is, they are constant dictionaries, not a series of if-else statements. So consider a switch-case statement like this:

switch (myString)
{
   case "cat": return 0;
   case "dog": return 1;
   case "elephant": return 3;
}

This is exactly what you want. And yes, I know, it’s ugly.

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