Are you specifically wanting it for that usage? IList has the Contains
method, and Array (which implements IList explicitly) also has IndexOf.
So, you're fine if you've actually already got a list. You can get a
list from a string using string.Split, but for the example you gave it
might be simpler to use:
string x = "abc,ihjl,dkfd,ooo";
if (x.StartsWith("abc") || x.IndexOf(",abc") != -1)
{
...
}