The idea is that if the user enters one or more characters that the Textbox will search its list of suggestions. In this test implementation this is done through a simple List<>. Ultimately my list will contain many thousands of items and I will need to replace the List<> with a more efficient search algorithm.

In the below example code typing a single “W” will expand to “Waterland”, if you continue typing beyond the final “d” it will suggest “Waterland Investments”. Type a “T” and it will branch to “Waterland Telecommunication Systems”.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace Dijksterhuis.org
{
    class AutoSuggestControl : TextBox
    {
        List<string> Suggestions;
        int PreviousLength; 

        // V1.0 We are using a simple sorted list for the suggestions
        public AutoSuggestControl() : base()
        {
            Suggestions = new List<string>();

            // We keep track of the previous length of the string
            // If the user tries to delete characters we do not interfere
            PreviousLength = 0; 

            // Very basic list, too slow to be suitable for systems with many entries
            Suggestions.Add("Waterland");
            Suggestions.Add("Waterland Investments");
            Suggestions.Add("Waterland Telecommuncation Systems");
            Suggestions.Sort();
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Search through the collection of suggestions for a match
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="Input"></param>
        /// <returns></returns>

        private string FindSuggestion(string Input)
        {
            if (Input != "")
            foreach (string Suggestion in Suggestions)
            {
                if (Suggestion.StartsWith(Input))
                    return Suggestion;
            }
            return null;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// We only interfere after receiving the OnTextChanged event.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="e"></param>
        protected override void OnTextChanged(EventArgs e)
        {
            base.OnTextChanged(e);

            // We don't do anything if the user is trying to shorten the sentence
            int CursorPosition = SelectionStart;
            if (Text.Length > PreviousLength && CursorPosition >= 0)
            {
                string Suggestion = FindSuggestion(Text.Substring(0, CursorPosition));
                if (Suggestion != null)
                {
                    // Set the contents of the textbox to the suggestion
                    Text = Suggestion;
                    // Setting text puts the cursor at the beginning of the textbox, so we need to reposition it
                    Select(CursorPosition, 0);
                }
            }
            PreviousLength = Text.Length;
        }

    }
}

This is a post from Martijn's C# Coding Blog.