c# - How to group a list of titles by the first letter with linguistic rules? -

i have list of game titles trying display. using orderby() sorts list according title rules current culture, en-us list this:

• arthur's game
• the best game ever
• carl's game
• david's game
• earnest's game
• an even better game

that's great , want.

but how take list , group first letter (the letter in bold), in culture-sensitive way? more specifically, how actual string orderby() used sort list way?

i tried looking @ system.globalization.sortkey.originalstring returned same string given.

i know can take sloppy way out , trim "a", "an" , "the" start of string, hoping .net had way hook culture-sensitive sorting logic more robust solution.

edit: looks mistaken, , groupby() not, in fact, sort way. messed sample list. looks have trim away "a", "an", , "the" prefixes. @stuartd pointing out error.

i don't know implemented solution sort titles required. since words exclude not many (as believe), define own list of exclusions like

list<string> exclusions = new list<string>() {     "the", "an", "a", }; 

based on exclusions order titles (case insensitive in implementation) using simple query ignoring exlusions defined:

var orderedtitles = titles.orderby(     t => string.join(" ", t.split(' ')         .where(s => !exclusions.any(x => x.equals(s, stringcomparison.ordinalignorecase))))); 

the idea split title spaces, , join without excluded words. after simple order job.

• a simple track1
• a simple track2

if need ignore exclusions until first non-excluded word, improve query using skip.

var result = titles.orderby(     t => string.join(" ", t.split(' ')         .skipwhile(s => exclusions.any(x => x.equals(s, stringcomparison.ordinalignorecase))))); 

• a simple track2
• a simple track1