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How to split at every second quotation mark

I have a string that looks like this
2,"E2002084700801601390870F"
3,"E2002084700801601390870F"
1,"E2002084700801601390870F"
4,"E2002084700801601390870F"
3,"E2002084700801601390870F"
This is one whole string, you can imagine it being on one row.
And I want to split this in the way they stand right now like this
2,"E2002084700801601390870F"
I cannot change the way it is formatted. So my best bet is to split at every second quotation mark. But I haven't found any good ways to do this. I've tried this https://stackoverflow.com/a/17892392/2914876 But I only get an error about invalid arguements.
Another issue is that this project is running .NET 2.0 so most LINQ functions aren't available.
Thank you.

Try this
var regEx = new Regex(#"\d+\,"".*?""");
var lines = regex.Matches(txt).OfType<Match>().Select(m => m.Value).ToArray();
Use foreach instead of LINQ Select on .Net 2
Regex regEx = new Regex(#"\d+\,"".*?""");
foreach(Match m in regex.Matches(txt))
{
var curLine = m.Value;
}

I see three possibilities, none of them are particularly exciting.
As #dvnrrs suggests, if there's no comma where you have line-breaks, you should be in great shape. Replace ," with something novel. Replace the remaining "s with what you need. Replace the "something novel" with ," to restore them. This is probably the most solid--it solves the problem without much room for bugs.
Iterate through the string looking for the index of the next " from the previous index, and maintain a state machine to decide whether to manipulate it or not.
Split the string on "s and rejoin them in whatever way works the best for your application.

I realize regular expressions will handle this but here's a pure 2.0 way to handle as well. It's much more readable and maintainable in my humble opinion.
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
internal class Program
{
private static void Main(string[] args)
{
const string data = #"2,""E2002084700801601390870F""3,""E2002084700801601390870F""1,""E2002084700801601390870F""4,""E2002084700801601390870F""3,""E2002084700801601390870F""";
var parsedData = ParseData(data);
foreach (var parsedDatum in parsedData)
{
Console.WriteLine(parsedDatum);
}
Console.ReadLine();
}
private static IEnumerable<string> ParseData(string data)
{
var results = new List<string>();
var split = data.Split(new [] {'"'}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
if (split.Length % 2 != 0)
{
throw new Exception("Data Formatting Error");
}
for (var index = 0; index < split.Length / 2; index += 2)
{
results.Add(string.Format(#"""{0}""{1}""", split[index], split[index + 1]));
}
return results;
}
}
}

Read Specific Strings from Text File

I'm trying to get certain strings out of a text file and put it in a variable.
This is what the structure of the text file looks like keep in mind this is just one line and each line looks like this and is separated by a blank line:
Date: 8/12/2013 12:00:00 AM Source Path: \\build\PM\11.0.64.1\build.11.0.64.1.FileServerOutput.zip Destination Path: C:\Users\Documents\.NET Development\testing\11.0.64.1\build.11.0.55.5.FileServerOutput.zip Folder Updated: 11.0.64.1 File Copied: build.11.0.55.5.FileServerOutput.zip
I wasn't entirely too sure of what to use for a delimiter for this text file or even if I should be using a delimiter so it could be subjected to change.
So just a quick example of what I want to happen with this, is I want to go through and grab the Destination Path and store it in a variable such as strDestPath.
Overall the code I came up with so far is this:
//find the variables from the text file
string[] lines = File.ReadAllLines(GlobalVars.strLogPath);
Yeah not much, but I thought perhaps if I just read one line at at a time and tried to search for what I was looking for through that line but honestly I'm not 100% sure if I should stick with that way or not...

If you are skeptical about how large your file is, you should come up using ReadLines which is deferred execution instead of ReadAllLines:
var lines = File.ReadLines(GlobalVars.strLogPath);
The ReadLines and ReadAllLines methods differ as follows:
When you use ReadLines, you can start enumerating the collection of strings before the whole collection is returned; when you use ReadAllLines, you must wait for the whole array of strings be returned before you can access the array. Therefore, when you are working with very large files, ReadLines can be more efficient.

As weird as it might sound, you should take a look to log parser. If you are free to set the file format you could use one that fits with log parser and, believe me, it will make your life a lot more easy.
Once you load the file with log parse you can user queries to get the information you want. If you don't care about using interop in your project you can even add a com reference and use it from any .net project.
This sample reads a HUGE csv file a makes a bulkcopy to the DB to perform there the final steps. This is not really your case, but shows you how easy is to do this with logparser
COMTSVInputContextClass logParserTsv = new COMTSVInputContextClass();
COMSQLOutputContextClass logParserSql = new COMSQLOutputContextClass();
logParserTsv.separator = ";";
logParserTsv.fixedSep = true;
logParserSql.database = _sqlDatabaseName;
logParserSql.server = _sqlServerName;
logParserSql.username = _sqlUser;
logParserSql.password = _sqlPass;
logParserSql.createTable = false;
logParserSql.ignoreIdCols = true;
// query shortened for clarity purposes
string SelectPattern = #"Select TO_STRING(UserName),TO_STRING(UserID) INTO {0} From {1}";
string query = string.Format(SelectPattern, _sqlTable, _csvPath);
logParser.ExecuteBatch(query, logParserTsv, logParserSql);
LogParser in one of those hidden gems Microsoft has and most people don't know about. I have use to read iis logs, CSV files, txt files, etc. You can even generate graphics!!!
Just check it here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/910447/en

Looks like you need to create a Tokenizer. Try something like this:
Define a list of token values:
List<string> gTkList = new List<string>() {"Date:","Source Path:" }; //...etc.
Create a Token class:
public class Token
{
private readonly string _tokenText;
private string _val;
private int _begin, _end;
public Token(string tk, int beg, int end)
{
this._tokenText = tk;
this._begin = beg;
this._end = end;
this._val = String.Empty;
}
public string TokenText
{
get{ return _tokenText; }
}
public string Value
{
get { return _val; }
set { _val = value; }
}
public int IdxBegin
{
get { return _begin; }
}
public int IdxEnd
{
get { return _end; }
}
}
Create a method to Find your Tokens:
List<Token> FindTokens(string str)
{
List<Token> retVal = new List<Token>();
if (!String.IsNullOrWhitespace(str))
{
foreach(string cd in gTkList)
{
int fIdx = str.IndexOf(cd);
if(fIdx > -1)
retVal.Add(cd,fIdx,fIdx + cd.Length);
}
}
return retVal;
}
Then just do something like this:
foreach(string ln in lines)
{
//returns ordered list of tokens
var tkns = FindTokens(ln);
for(int i=0; i < tkns.Length; i++)
{
int len = (i == tkns.Length - 1) ? ln.Length - tkns[i].IdxEnd : tkns[i+1].IdxBegin - tkns[i].IdxEnd;
tkns[i].value = ln.Substring(tkns[i].IdxEnd+1,len).Trim();
}
//Do something with the gathered values
foreach(Token tk in tkns)
{
//stuff
}
}

Getting substring between two separators in an arbitrary position

I have following string:
string source = "Test/Company/Business/Department/Logs.tvs/v1";
The / character is the separator between various elements in the string. I need to get the last two elements of the string. I have following code for this purpose. This works fine. Is there any faster/simpler code for this?
CODE
static void Main()
{
string component = String.Empty;
string version = String.Empty;
string source = "Test/Company/Business/Department/Logs.tvs/v1";
if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(source))
{
String[] partsOfSource = source.Split('/');
if (partsOfSource != null)
{
if (partsOfSource.Length > 2)
{
component = partsOfSource[partsOfSource.Length - 2];
}
if (partsOfSource.Length > 1)
{
version = partsOfSource[partsOfSource.Length - 1];
}
}
}
Console.WriteLine(component);
Console.WriteLine(version);
Console.Read();
}

Why no regular expression? This one is fairly easy:
.*/(?<component>.*)/(?<version>.*)$
You can even label your groups so for your match all you need to do is:
component = myMatch.Groups["component"];
version = myMatch.Groups["version"];

The following should be faster, as it only scans as much of the string as it needs to to find two / and it doesn't bother splitting up the whole string:
string component = "";
string version = "";
string source = "Test/Company/Business/Department/Logs.tvs/v1";
int last = source.LastIndexOf('/');
if (last != -1)
{
int penultimate = source.LastIndexOf('/', last - 1);
version = source.Substring(last + 1);
component = source.Substring(penultimate + 1, last - penultimate - 1);
}
That said, as with all performance questions: profile! Try the two side-by-side with a big list of real-life inputs and see which is fastest.
(Also, this will leave empty strings rather than throw an exception if there is no slash in the input... but throw if source is null, lazy me.)

Your approach is the most suitable one given that your are looking for substrings at a particular index. A LINQ expression to do the same in this case will likely not improve the code or its readability.
For reference, there is some great information from Microsoft here on working with strings and LINQ. In particular see the article here which covers some examples with both LINQ and RegEx.
EDIT: +1 For Matt's named group within RegEx approach... that's the nicest solution I've seen.

Your code mostly looks fine. A couple of points to note:
String.Split() will never return null, so you don't need the null check on it.
If the source string has fewer than two / characters, how would you deal with that? (The Original Post was updated to address this)
Do you really want to just output empty strings if your source string is null or empty (or invalid)? If you have specific expectations about the nature of the input, you may want to consider failing fast when those expectations are not met.

You could try something like this but I doubt it would be much faster. You could do some meassurements with System.Diagnostics.StopWatch to see if you feel the need.
string source = "Test/Company/Business/Department/Logs.tvs/v1";
int index1 = source.LastIndexOf('/');
string last = source.Substring(index1 + 1);
string substring = source.Substring(0, index1);
int index2 = substring.LastIndexOf('/');
string secondLast = substring.Substring(index2 + 1);

I would try
string source = "Test/Company/Business/Department/Logs.tvs/v1";
var components = source.Split('/').Reverse().Take(2);
String last = string.Empty;
var enumerable = components as string[] ?? components.ToArray();
if (enumerable.Count() == 2)
last = enumerable.FirstOrDefault();
var secondLast = enumerable.LastOrDefault();
Hope this will help

you can retrieve the last two words using the process as below:
string source = "Test/Company/Business/Department/Logs.tvs/v1";
String[] partsOfSource = source.Split('/');
if(partsOfSourch.length>2)
for(int i=partsOfSourch.length-2;i<=partsOfSource.length-1;i++)
console.writeline(partsOfSource[i]);

Extracting data from plain text string

I am trying to process a report from a system which gives me the following code
000=[GEN] OK {Q=1 M=1 B=002 I=3e5e65656-e5dd-45678-b785-a05656569e}
I need to extract the values between the curly brackets {} and save them in to variables. I assume I will need to do this using regex or similar? I've really no idea where to start!! I'm using c# asp.net 4.
I need the following variables
param1 = 000
param2 = GEN
param3 = OK
param4 = 1 //Q
param5 = 1 //M
param6 = 002 //B
param7 = 3e5e65656-e5dd-45678-b785-a05656569e //I
I will name the params based on what they actually mean. Can anyone please help me here? I have tried to split based on spaces, but I get the other garbage with it!
Thanks for any pointers/help!

If the format is pretty constant, you can use .NET string processing methods to pull out the values, something along the lines of
string line =
"000=[GEN] OK {Q=1 M=1 B=002 I=3e5e65656-e5dd-45678-b785-a05656569e}";
int start = line.IndexOf('{');
int end = line.IndexOf('}');
string variablePart = line.Substring(start + 1, end - start);
string[] variables = variablePart.Split(' ');
foreach (string variable in variables)
{
string[] parts = variable.Split('=');
// parts[0] holds the variable name, parts[1] holds the value
}
Wrote this off the top of my head, so there may be an off-by-one error somewhere. Also, it would be advisable to add error checking e.g. to make sure the input string has both a { and a }.

I would suggest a regular expression for this type of work.
var objRegex = new System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex(#"^(\d+)=\[([A-Z]+)\] ([A-Z]+) \{Q=(\d+) M=(\d+) B=(\d+) I=([a-z0-9\-]+)\}$");
var objMatch = objRegex.Match("000=[GEN] OK {Q=1 M=1 B=002 I=3e5e65656-e5dd-45678-b785-a05656569e}");
if (objMatch.Success)
{
Console.WriteLine(objMatch.Groups[1].ToString());
Console.WriteLine(objMatch.Groups[2].ToString());
Console.WriteLine(objMatch.Groups[3].ToString());
Console.WriteLine(objMatch.Groups[4].ToString());
Console.WriteLine(objMatch.Groups[5].ToString());
Console.WriteLine(objMatch.Groups[6].ToString());
Console.WriteLine(objMatch.Groups[7].ToString());
}
I've just tested this out and it works well for me.

Use a regular expression.
Quick and dirty attempt:
(?<ID1>[0-9]*)=\[(?<GEN>[a-zA-Z]*)\] OK {Q=(?<Q>[0-9]*) M=(?<M>[0-9]*) B=(?<B>[0-9]*) I=(?<I>[a-zA-Z0-9\-]*)}
This will generate named groups called ID1, GEN, Q, M, B and I.
Check out the MSDN docs for details on using Regular Expressions in C#.
You can use Regex Hero for quick C# regex testing.

You can use String.Split
string[] parts = s.Split(new string[] {"=[", "] ", " {Q=", " M=", " B=", " I=", "}"},
StringSplitOptions.None);

This solution breaks up your report code into segments and stores the desired values into an array.
The regular expression matches one report code segment at a time and stores the appropriate values in the "Parsed Report Code Array".
As your example implied, the first two code segments are treated differently than the ones after that. I made the assumption that it is always the first two segments that are processed differently.
private static string[] ParseReportCode(string reportCode) {
const int FIRST_VALUE_ONLY_SEGMENT = 3;
const int GRP_SEGMENT_NAME = 1;
const int GRP_SEGMENT_VALUE = 2;
Regex reportCodeSegmentPattern = new Regex(#"\s*([^\}\{=\s]+)(?:=\[?([^\s\]\}]+)\]?)?");
Match matchReportCodeSegment = reportCodeSegmentPattern.Match(reportCode);
List<string> parsedCodeSegmentElements = new List<string>();
int segmentCount = 0;
while (matchReportCodeSegment.Success) {
if (++segmentCount < FIRST_VALUE_ONLY_SEGMENT) {
string segmentName = matchReportCodeSegment.Groups[GRP_SEGMENT_NAME].Value;
parsedCodeSegmentElements.Add(segmentName);
}
string segmentValue = matchReportCodeSegment.Groups[GRP_SEGMENT_VALUE].Value;
if (segmentValue.Length > 0) parsedCodeSegmentElements.Add(segmentValue);
matchReportCodeSegment = matchReportCodeSegment.NextMatch();
}
return parsedCodeSegmentElements.ToArray();
}

Searching a String for a certain thing, then removing up to a certain point to a list

Im working on an Automatic Downloader of sorts for personal use, and so far I have managed to set up the program to store the source of the link provided into a string, the links to the downloads are written in plain text in the source, So what I need to be able to do, is search a string for say "http://media.website.com/folder/" and have it return all occurences to a list? the problem is though, I also need the unique id given for each file after the /folder/" to be stored with each occurence of the above, Any ideas? Im using Visual C#.
Thanks!!!
Steven

Maybe something like this?
Dictionary<string, string> dictionary = new Dictionary<string, string>();
string searchText = "Text to search here";
string textToFind = "Text to find here";
string fileID = "";
bool finished = false;
int foundIndex = 0;
while (!finished)
{
foundIndex = searchText.IndexOf(textToFind, foundIndex);
if (foundIndex == -1)
{
finished = true;
}
else
{
//get fieID, change to whatever logic makes sense, in this example
//it assumes a 2 character identifier following the search text
fileID = searchText.Substring(foundIndex + searchText.Length, 2);
dictionary.Add(fileID, textToFind);
}
}

use Regex to get the matches, that will give you a list of all the matches. Use wildcards for the numeric value that will differ between matches, so you can parse for it.
I'm not great with Regex, but it'd be something like,
Regex.Match(<your string>,#"(http://media.website.com/folder/)(d+)")

Or
var textToFind = "http://media.website.com/folder/";
var ids = from l in listOfUrls where l.StartsWith(textToFind) select new { RawUrl = l, ID=l.Substring(textToFind.Length)}