One way to do it would be to store the corresponding items from each file in a Tuple, and then store those in a List. This way the items will all stay together, but you can sort your list on any of the Tuple fields. If you were doing anything more detailed with these items, I would suggest creating a simple class to store them, so the code would be more maintainable.
Something like:
public class Item
{
public DayOfWeek Day { get; set; }
public DateTime Date { get; set; }
public string Value { get; set; }
}
The example below could easily be converted to use such a class, but for now it uses a Tuple<string, string, string>. As an intermediate step, you could easily convert the items as you create the Tuple to get more strongly-typed versions, for example, you could have Tuple<DayOfWeek, DateTime, string>.
Here's the sample code for reading your file items into a list, and how to sort on each item type:
public static void Main()
{
// For testing sake, I created some dummy files
var file1 = @"D:\Public\Temp\File1.txt";
var file2 = @"D:\Public\Temp\File2.txt";
var file3 = @"D:\Public\Temp\File3.txt";
// Validation that files exist and have same number
// of items is intentionally left out for the example
// Read the contents of each file into a separate variable
var days = File.ReadAllLines(file1);
var dates = File.ReadAllLines(file2);
var values = File.ReadAllLines(file3);
var itemCount = days.Length;
// The list of items read from each file
var fileItems = new List<Tuple<string, string, string>>();
// Add a new item for each line in each file
for (int i = 0; i < itemCount; i++)
{
fileItems.Add(new Tuple<string, string, string>(
days[i], dates[i], values[i]));
}
// Display the items in console window
fileItems.ForEach(item =>
Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} = {2}",
item.Item1, item.Item2, item.Item3));
// Example for how to order the items:
// By days
fileItems = fileItems.OrderBy(item => item.Item1).ToList();
// By dates
fileItems = fileItems.OrderBy(item => item.Item2).ToList();
// By values
fileItems = fileItems.OrderBy(item => item.Item3).ToList();
// Order by descending
fileItems = fileItems.OrderByDescending(item => item.Item1).ToList();
// Show the values based on the last ordering
fileItems.ForEach(item =>
Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} = {2}",
item.Item1, item.Item2, item.Item3));
}
