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Replacing anchor/link in text

I'm having issues doing a find / replace type of action in my function, i'm extracting the < a href="link">anchor from an article and replacing it with this format: [link anchor] the link and anchor will be dynamic so i can't hard code the values, what i have so far is:
public static string GetAndFixAnchor(string articleBody, string articleWikiCheck) {
string theString = string.Empty;
switch (articleWikiCheck) {
case "id|wpTextbox1":
StringBuilder newHtml = new StringBuilder(articleBody);
Regex r = new Regex(#"\<a href=\""([^\""]+)\"">([^<]+)");
string final = string.Empty;
foreach (var match in r.Matches(theString).Cast<Match>().OrderByDescending(m => m.Index))
{
string text = match.Groups[2].Value;
string newHref = "[" + match.Groups[1].Index + " " + match.Groups[1].Index + "]";
newHtml.Remove(match.Groups[1].Index, match.Groups[1].Length);
newHtml.Insert(match.Groups[1].Index, newHref);
}
theString = newHtml.ToString();
break;
default:
theString = articleBody;
break;
}
Helpers.ReturnMessage(theString);
return theString;
}
Currently, it just returns the article as it originally is, with the traditional anchor text format: < a href="link">anchor
Can anyone see what i have done wrong?
regards

If your input is HTML, you should consider using a corresponding parser, HtmlAgilityPack being really helpful.
As for the current code, it looks too verbose. You may use a single Regex.Replace to perform the search and replace in one pass:
public static string GetAndFixAnchor(string articleBody, string articleWikiCheck) {
if (articleWikiCheck == "id|wpTextbox1")
{
return Regex.Replace(articleBody, #"<a\s+href=""([^""]+)"">([^<]+)", "[$1 $2]");
}
else
{
// Helpers.ReturnMessage(articleBody); // Uncomment if it is necessary
return articleBody;
}
}
See the regex demo.
The <a\s+href="([^"]+)">([^<]+) regex matches <a, 1 or more whitespaces, href=", then captures into Group 1 any one or more chars other than ", then matches "> and then captures into Group 2 any one or more chars other than <.
The [$1 $2] replacement replaces the matched text with [, Group 1 contents, space, Group 2 contents and a ].

Updated (Corrected regex to support whitespaces and new lines)
You can try this expression
Regex r = new Regex(#"<[\s\n]*a[\s\n]*(([^\s]+\s*[ ]*=*[ ]*[\s|\n*]*('|"").*\3)[\s\n]*)*href[ ]*=[ ]*('|"")(?<link>.*)\4[.\n]*>(?<anchor>[\s\S]*?)[\s\n]*<\/[\s\n]*a>");
It will match your anchors, even if they are splitted into multiple lines. The reason why it is so long is because it supports empty whitespaces between the tags and their values, and C# does not supports subroutines, so this part [\s\n]* has to be repeated multiple times.
You can see a working sample at dotnetfiddle
You can use it in your example like this.
public static string GetAndFixAnchor(string articleBody, string articleWikiCheck) {
if (articleWikiCheck == "id|wpTextbox1")
{
return Regex.Replace(articleBody,
#"<[\s\n]*a[\s\n]*(([^\s]+\s*[ ]*=*[ ]*[\s|\n*]*('|"").*\3)[\s\n]*)*href[ ]*=[ ]*('|"")(?<link>.*)\4[.\n]*>(?<anchor>[\s\S]*?)[\s\n]*<\/[\s\n]*a>",
"[${link} ${anchor}]");
}
else
{
return articleBody;
}
}

replacing text with cleaned word case insensitive c#

I have a list of bad words, that if found in the text string, will be replaced by a cleaned word.
eg. badwords{woof} is replaced by w$$f
But is currently only working when the array list is in the same case as the matched word in the sentence.
var badWords = new List<string>{"woof", "meow"}
var string = "I have a cat named meow and a dog name Woof."
Should become === "I have a cat named m$$w and a dog name W$$f"
public string CensorText(string text)
{
if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(text))
{
return text;
}
foreach (string word in CensoredWords)
{
text = text.Replace(word, WordCleaner(word));
}
return text;
}
private static string WordCleaner(string wordToClean)
{
string firstChar = wordToClean.Substring(0,1);
string lastChar = wordToClean.Substring(wordToClean.Length - 1);
string centerHash = new string('$', wordToClean.Length-2);
return string.Concat(firstChar, centerHash, lastChar);
}
How can make it so that its case insensitive when looping through the words and cleaning them. Simpler the answer is better.

Try replacing:
text = text.Replace(word, WordCleaner(word));
with
text = text.Replace(word.ToLower(), WordCleaner(word));
This converts any upper case letter to a lower case one.
Edit
I've realised that I've made the wrong variable into lower case.
Change:
public string CensorText(string text)
{
To:
public string CensorText(string text)
{
text = text.ToLower();
Edit 2
To retain the original sentence with the censored words changed, it would be much easier to use re instead. First, revert your file back to how it was in the question.
Now replace:
text = text.Replace(word, WordCleaner(word));
with:
text = regex.replace(text,word,WordCleaner(word),RegexOptions.Ignorecase);

Here's a simple option you can use.
The benefit is you don't care which of the word is lower case, it'll work for either cases. Note that compare returns an int, hence why we check it's 0 for a match.
string input = "the Woof is on Fire, we don't need no bucket, leT the ...";
string[] bad_words = new string[] {"woof","fire","BucKet", "Let"};
foreach (var word in input.Split(' ')) {
if (bad_words.Any( b => String.Compare( word, b // Following line does what you want:
, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) == 0))
Console.Write(WordCleaner(word));
else
Console.Write(word);
}
Output:
the W$$f is on F$$e we don't need no b$$$$t l$T the ...
Seems fine to me. Note that if you split on space, a word with a comma right after will have that comma as part of the word

Splitting data with inconsistent delimiters

I have these data files comming in on a server that i need to split into [date time] and [value]. Most of them are delimited a single time between time and value and between date and time is a space. I already have a program processing the data with a simple split(char[]) but now found data where the delimiter is a space and i am wondering how to tackle this best.
So most files i encountered look like this:
18-06-2014 12:00:00|220.6
The delimiters vary, but i tackled that with a char[]. But today i ran into a problem on this format:
18-06-2014 12:00:00 220.6
This complicates things a little. The easy solution would be to just add a space to my split characters and when i find 3 splits combine the first two before processing?
I'm looking for a 2nd opining on this matter. Also the time format can change to something like d/m/yy and the amount of lines can run into the millions so i would like to keep it as efficient as possible.

Yes I believe the most efficient solution is to add space as a delimiter and then just combine the first two if you get three. That is going to be be more efficient than regex.

You've got a string 18-06-2014 12:00:00 220.6 where first 19 characters is a date, one character is a separation symbol and other characters is a value. So:
var test = "18-06-2014 12:00:00|220.6";
var dateString = test.Remove(19);
var val = test.Substring(20);
Added normalization:
static void Main(string[] args) {
var test = "18-06-2014 12:00:00|220.6";
var test2 = "18-6-14 12:00:00|220.6";
var test3 = "8-06-14 12:00:00|220.6";
Console.WriteLine(test);
Console.WriteLine(TryNormalizeImportValue(test));
Console.WriteLine(test2);
Console.WriteLine(TryNormalizeImportValue(test2));
Console.WriteLine(test3);
Console.WriteLine(TryNormalizeImportValue(test3));
}
private static string TryNormalizeImportValue(string value) {
var valueSplittedByDateSeparator = value.Split('-');
if (valueSplittedByDateSeparator.Length < 3) throw new InvalidDataException();
var normalizedDay = NormalizeImportDayValue(valueSplittedByDateSeparator[0]);
var normalizedMonth = NormalizeImportMonthValue(valueSplittedByDateSeparator[1]);
var valueYearPartSplittedByDateTimeSeparator = valueSplittedByDateSeparator[2].Split(' ');
if (valueYearPartSplittedByDateTimeSeparator.Length < 2) throw new InvalidDataException();
var normalizedYear = NormalizeImportYearValue(valueYearPartSplittedByDateTimeSeparator[0]);
var valueTimeAndValuePart = valueYearPartSplittedByDateTimeSeparator[1];
return string.Concat(normalizedDay, '-', normalizedMonth, '-', normalizedYear, ' ', valueTimeAndValuePart);
}
private static string NormalizeImportDayValue(string value) {
return value.Length == 2 ? value : "0" + value;
}
private static string NormalizeImportMonthValue(string value) {
return value.Length == 2 ? value : "0" + value;
}
private static string NormalizeImportYearValue(string value) {
return value.Length == 4 ? value : DateTime.Now.Year.ToString(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture).Remove(2) + value;
}

Well you can use this one to get the date and the value.
(((0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])-(0[1-9]|1[012])-(19|20)\d\d)\s((\d{2}:?){3})|(\d+\.?\d+))
This will give you 2 matches
1º 18-06-2014 12:00:00
2º 220.6
Example:
http://regexr.com/391d3

This regex matches both kinds of strings, capturing the two tokens to Groups 1 and 2.
Note that we are not using \d because in .NET it can match any Unicode digits such as Thai...
The key is in the [ |] character class, which specifies your two allowable delimiters
Here is the regex:
^([0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{4} (?:[0-9]{2}:){2}[0-9]{2})[ |]([0-9]{3}\.[0-9])$
In the demo, please pay attention to the capture Groups in the right pane.
Here is how to retrieve the values:
var myRegex = new Regex(#"^([0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{4} (?:[0-9]{2}:){2}[0-9]{2})[ |]([0-9]{3}\.[0-9])$", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
string mydate = myRegex.Match(s1).Groups[1].Value;
Console.WriteLine(mydate);
string myvalue = myRegex.Match(s1).Groups[1].Value;
Console.WriteLine(myvalue);
Please let me know if you have questions

Given the provided format I'd use something like
char delimiter = ' '; //or whatever the delimiter for the specific file is, this can be set in a previous step
int index = line.LastIndexOf(delimiter);
var date = line.Remove(index);
var value = line.Substring(++index);
If there are that many lines and efficiency matters, you could obtain the delimiter once on the first line, by looping back from the end and find the first index that is not a digit or dot (or comma if the value can contain those) to determine the delimiter, and then use something such as the above.
If each line can contain a different delimiter, you could always track back to the first not value char as described above and still maintain adequate performance.
Edit: for completeness sake, to find the delimiter, you could perform the following once per file (provided that the delimiter stays consistent within the file)
char delimiter = '\0';
for (int i = line.Length - 1; i >= 0; i--)
{
var c= line[i];
if (!char.IsDigit(c) && c != '.')
{
delimiter = c;
break;
}
}

Finding the number of occurences strings in a specific format occur in a given text

I have a large string, where there can be specific words (text followed by a single colon, like "test:") occurring more than once. For example, like this:
word:
TEST:
word:
TEST:
TEST: // random text
"word" occurs twice and "TEST" occurs thrice, but the amount can be variable. Also, these words don't have to be in the same order and there can be more text in the same line as the word (as shown in the last example of "TEST"). What I need to do is append the occurrence number to each word, for example the output string needs to be this:
word_ONE:
TEST_ONE:
word_TWO:
TEST_TWO:
TEST_THREE: // random text
The RegEx for getting these words which I've written is ^\b[A-Za-z0-9_]{4,}\b:. However, I don't know how to accomplish the above in a fast way. Any ideas?

Regex is perfect for this job - using Replace with a match evaluator:
This example is not tested nor compiled:
public class Fix
{
public static String Execute(string largeText)
{
return Regex.Replace(largeText, "^(\w{4,}):", new Fix().Evaluator);
}
private Dictionary<String, int> counters = new Dictionary<String, int>();
private static String[] numbers = {"ONE", "TWO", "THREE",...};
public String Evaluator(Match m)
{
String word = m.Groups[1].Value;
int count;
if (!counters.TryGetValue(word, out count))
count = 0;
count++;
counters[word] = count;
return word + "_" + numbers[count-1] + ":";
}
}
This should return what you requested when calling:
result = Fix.Execute(largeText);

i think you can do this with Regax.Replace(string, string, MatchEvaluator) and a dictionary.
Dictionary<string, int> wordCount=new Dictionary<string,int>();
string AppendIndex(Match m)
{
string matchedString = m.ToString();
if(wordCount.Contains(matchedString))
wordCount[matchedString]=wordCount[matchedString]+1;
else
wordCount.Add(matchedString, 1);
return matchedString + "_"+ wordCount.ToString();// in the format: word_1, word_2
}
string inputText = "....";
string regexText = #"";
static void Main()
{
string text = "....";
string result = Regex.Replace(text, #"^\b[A-Za-z0-9_]{4,}\b:",
new MatchEvaluator(AppendIndex));
}
see this:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/cft8645c(v=VS.80).aspx

If I understand you correctly, regex is not necessary here.
You can split your large string by the ':' character. Maybe you also need to read line by line (split by '\n'). After that you just create a dictionary (IDictionary<string, int>), which counts the occurrences of certain words. Every time you find word x, you increase the counter in the dictionary.
EDIT
Read your file line by line OR split the string by '\n'
Check if your delimiter is present. Either by splitting by ':' OR using regex.
Get the first item from the split array OR the first match of your regex.
Use a dictionary to count your occurrences.
if (dictionary.Contains(key)) dictionary[key]++;
else dictionary.Add(key, 1);
If you need words instead of numbers, then create another dictionary for these. So that dictionary[key] equals one if key equals 1. Mabye there is another solution for that.

Look at this example (I know it's not perfect and not so nice)
lets leave the exact argument for the Split function, I think it can help
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string a = "word:word:test:-1+234=567:test:test:";
string[] tks = a.Split(':');
Regex re = new Regex(#"^\b[A-Za-z0-9_]{4,}\b");
var res = from x in tks
where re.Matches(x).Count > 0
select x + DecodeNO(tks.Count(y=>y.Equals(x)));
foreach (var item in res)
{
Console.WriteLine(item);
}
Console.ReadLine();
}
private static string DecodeNO(int n)
{
switch (n)
{
case 1:
return "_one";
case 2:
return "_two";
case 3:
return "_three";
}
return "";
}

How to capitalize the first character of each word, or the first character of a whole string, with C#?

I could write my own algorithm to do it, but I feel there should be the equivalent to ruby's humanize in C#.
I googled it but only found ways to humanize dates.
Examples:
A way to turn "Lorem Lipsum Et" into "Lorem lipsum et"
A way to turn "Lorem lipsum et" into "Lorem Lipsum Et"

As discussed in the comments of #miguel's answer, you can use TextInfo.ToTitleCase which has been available since .NET 1.1. Here is some code corresponding to your example:
string lipsum1 = "Lorem lipsum et";
// Creates a TextInfo based on the "en-US" culture.
TextInfo textInfo = new CultureInfo("en-US",false).TextInfo;
// Changes a string to titlecase.
Console.WriteLine("\"{0}\" to titlecase: {1}",
lipsum1,
textInfo.ToTitleCase( lipsum1 ));
// Will output: "Lorem lipsum et" to titlecase: Lorem Lipsum Et
It will ignore casing things that are all caps such as "LOREM LIPSUM ET" because it is taking care of cases if acronyms are in text so that "IEEE" (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) won't become "ieee" or "Ieee".
However if you only want to capitalize the first character you can do the solution that is over here… or you could just split the string and capitalize the first one in the list:
string lipsum2 = "Lorem Lipsum Et";
string lipsum2lower = textInfo.ToLower(lipsum2);
string[] lipsum2split = lipsum2lower.Split(' ');
bool first = true;
foreach (string s in lipsum2split)
{
if (first)
{
Console.Write("{0} ", textInfo.ToTitleCase(s));
first = false;
}
else
{
Console.Write("{0} ", s);
}
}
// Will output: Lorem lipsum et

There is another elegant solution :
Define the function ToTitleCase in an static class of your projet
using System.Globalization;
public static string ToTitleCase(this string title)
{
return CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.TextInfo.ToTitleCase(title.ToLower());
}
And then use it like a string extension anywhere on your project:
"have a good day !".ToTitleCase() // "Have A Good Day !"

Use regular expressions for this looks much cleaner:
string s = "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog";
s = Regex.Replace(s, #"(^\w)|(\s\w)", m => m.Value.ToUpper());

All the examples seem to make the other characters lowered first which isn't what I needed.
customerName = CustomerName <-- Which is what I wanted
this is an example = This Is An Example
public static string ToUpperEveryWord(this string s)
{
// Check for empty string.
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(s))
{
return string.Empty;
}
var words = s.Split(' ');
var t = "";
foreach (var word in words)
{
t += char.ToUpper(word[0]) + word.Substring(1) + ' ';
}
return t.Trim();
}

If you just want to capitalize the first character, just stick this in a utility method of your own:
return string.IsNullOrEmpty(str)
? str
: str[0].ToUpperInvariant() + str.Substring(1).ToLowerInvariant();
There's also a library method to capitalize the first character of every word:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.globalization.textinfo.totitlecase.aspx

CSS technique is ok but only changes the presentation of the string in the browser. A better method is to make the text itself capitalised before sending to browser.
Most of the above implimentations are ok, but none of them address the issue of what happens if you have mixed case words that need to be preserved, or if you want to use true Title Case, for example:
"Where to Study PHd Courses in the USA"
or
"IRS Form UB40a"
Also using CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.TextInfo.ToTitleCase(string) preserves upper case words as in
"sports and MLB baseball" which becomes "Sports And MLB Baseball" but if the whole string is put in upper case, then this causes an issue.
So I put together a simple function that allows you to keep the capital and mixed case words and make small words lower case (if they are not at the start and end of the phrase) by including them in a specialCases and lowerCases string arrays:
public static string TitleCase(string value) {
string titleString = ""; // destination string, this will be returned by function
if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(value)) {
string[] lowerCases = new string[12] { "of", "the", "in", "a", "an", "to", "and", "at", "from", "by", "on", "or"}; // list of lower case words that should only be capitalised at start and end of title
string[] specialCases = new string[7] { "UK", "USA", "IRS", "UCLA", "PHd", "UB40a", "MSc" }; // list of words that need capitalisation preserved at any point in title
string[] words = value.ToLower().Split(' ');
bool wordAdded = false; // flag to confirm whether this word appears in special case list
int counter = 1;
foreach (string s in words) {
// check if word appears in lower case list
foreach (string lcWord in lowerCases) {
if (s.ToLower() == lcWord) {
// if lower case word is the first or last word of the title then it still needs capital so skip this bit.
if (counter == 0 || counter == words.Length) { break; };
titleString += lcWord;
wordAdded = true;
break;
}
}
// check if word appears in special case list
foreach (string scWord in specialCases) {
if (s.ToUpper() == scWord.ToUpper()) {
titleString += scWord;
wordAdded = true;
break;
}
}
if (!wordAdded) { // word does not appear in special cases or lower cases, so capitalise first letter and add to destination string
titleString += char.ToUpper(s[0]) + s.Substring(1).ToLower();
}
wordAdded = false;
if (counter < words.Length) {
titleString += " "; //dont forget to add spaces back in again!
}
counter++;
}
}
return titleString;
}
This is just a quick and simple method - and can probably be improved a bit if you want to spend more time on it.
if you want to keep the capitalisation of smaller words like "a" and "of" then just remove them from the special cases string array. Different organisations have different rules on capitalisation.
You can see an example of this code in action on this site: Egg Donation London - this site automatically creates breadcrumb trails at the top of the pages by parsing the url eg "/services/uk-egg-bank/introduction" - then each folder name in the trail has hyphens replaced with spaces and capitalises the folder name, so uk-egg-bank becomes UK Egg Bank. (preserving the upper case 'UK')
An extension of this code could be to have a lookup table of acronyms and uppercase/lowercase words in a shared text file, database table or web service so that the list of mixed case words can be maintained from one single place and apply to many different applications that rely on the function.

There is no prebuilt solution for proper linguistic captialization in .NET. What kind of capitialization are you going for? Are you following the Chicago Manual of Style conventions? AMA or MLA? Even plain english sentence capitalization has 1000's of special exceptions for words. I can't speak to what ruby's humanize does, but I imagine it likely doesn't follow linguistic rules of capitalization and instead does something much simpler.
Internally, we encountered this same issue and had to write a fairly large amount code just to handle proper (in our little world) casing of article titles, not even accounting for sentence capitalization. And it indeed does get "fuzzy" :)
It really depends on what you need - why are you trying to convert the sentences to proper capitalization (and in what context)?

I have achieved the same using custom extension methods. For First Letter of First sub-string use the method yourString.ToFirstLetterUpper(). For First Letter of Every sub-string excluding articles and some propositions, use the method yourString.ToAllFirstLetterInUpper(). Below is a console program:
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Console.WriteLine("this is my string".ToAllFirstLetterInUpper());
Console.WriteLine("uniVersity of lonDon".ToAllFirstLetterInUpper());
}
}
public static class StringExtension
{
public static string ToAllFirstLetterInUpper(this string str)
{
var array = str.Split(" ");
for (int i = 0; i < array.Length; i++)
{
if (array[i] == "" || array[i] == " " || listOfArticles_Prepositions().Contains(array[i])) continue;
array[i] = array[i].ToFirstLetterUpper();
}
return string.Join(" ", array);
}
private static string ToFirstLetterUpper(this string str)
{
return str?.First().ToString().ToUpper() + str?.Substring(1).ToLower();
}
private static string[] listOfArticles_Prepositions()
{
return new[]
{
"in","on","to","of","and","or","for","a","an","is"
};
}
}
OUTPUT
This is My String
University of London
Process finished with exit code 0.

Far as I know, there's not a way to do that without writing (or cribbing) code. C# nets (ha!) you upper, lower and title (what you have) cases:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312890/EN-US/