Checking Whether Two Words Are Anagrams

In this lesson you will learn how to check whether two words are anagrams in C#, covering how to sort and compare strings. This is for anyone searching for "C# anagram check implementation".

An anagram is a different word made from the same letters rearranged (for example, listen and silent). Sort the letters of both strings and see whether they match.

The sample code lower-cases and sorts the letters with a.ToLower().OrderBy(c => c), then compares the two sorted sequences with .SequenceEqual(). "listen" and "silent" are made of the same letters, so they match once sorted.

A common stumbling block for beginners is not allowing for case differences. The sample folds to lower case with ToLower() before comparing; skip that and the same word in different cases is judged to be different.

It looks like a word game, but it is useful, simple practice in real string comparison. For long strings, counting how often each character occurs is faster.

📖 Reference code

using System;
using System.Linq;

class Program {
    static bool IsAnagram(string a, string b) {
        var sa = a.ToLower().OrderBy(c => c);
        var sb = b.ToLower().OrderBy(c => c);
        return sa.SequenceEqual(sb);
    }

    static void Main() {
        Console.WriteLine(IsAnagram("listen", "silent"));
        Console.WriteLine(IsAnagram("hello", "world"));
    }
}

✍️ Your code

Type your code, then press "Run"

🧪 This site can't compile or run C# directly, so it checks on the spot whether what you typed matches the reference code (scoring happens entirely in your browser — nothing is sent anywhere).