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How to strip a string from the point a hyphen is found within the string C#

I'm currently trying to strip a string of data that is may contain the hyphen symbol.
E.g. Basic logic:
string stringin = "test - 9894"; OR Data could be == "test";
if (string contains a hyphen "-"){
Strip stringin;
output would be "test" deleting from the hyphen.
}
Console.WriteLine(stringin);
The current C# code i'm trying to get to work is shown below:
string Details = "hsh4a - 8989";
var regexItem = new Regex("^[^-]*-?[^-]*$");
string stringin;
stringin = Details.ToString();
if (regexItem.IsMatch(stringin)) {
stringin = stringin.Substring(0, stringin.IndexOf("-") - 1); //Strip from the ending chars and - once - is hit.
}
Details = stringin;
Console.WriteLine(Details);
But pulls in an Error when the string does not contain any hyphen's.

How about just doing this?
stringin.Split('-')[0].Trim();
You could even specify the maximum number of substrings using overloaded Split constructor.
stringin.Split('-', 1)[0].Trim();

Your regex is asking for "zero or one repetition of -", which means that it matches even if your input does NOT contain a hyphen. Thereafter you do this
stringin.Substring(0, stringin.IndexOf("-") - 1)
Which gives an index out of range exception (There is no hyphen to find).
Make a simple change to your regex and it works with or without - ask for "one or more hyphens":
var regexItem = new Regex("^[^-]*-+[^-]*$");
here -------------------------^

It seems that you want the (sub)string starting from the dash ('-') if original one contains '-' or the original string if doesn't have dash.
If it's your case:
String Details = "hsh4a - 8989";
Details = Details.Substring(Details.IndexOf('-') + 1);

I wouldn't use regex for this case if I were you, it makes the solution much more complex than it can be.
For string I am sure will have no more than a couple of dashes I would use this code, because it is one liner and very simple:
string str= entryString.Split(new [] {'-'}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries)[0];
If you know that a string might contain high amount of dashes, it is not recommended to use this approach - it will create high amount of different strings, although you are looking just for the first one. So, the solution would look like something like this code:
int firstDashIndex = entryString.IndexOf("-");
string str = firstDashIndex > -1? entryString.Substring(0, firstDashIndex) : entryString;

you don't need a regex for this. A simple IndexOf function will give you the index of the hyphen, then you can clean it up from there.
This is also a great place to start writing unit tests as well. They are very good for stuff like this.
Here's what the code could look like :
string inputString = "ho-something";
string outPutString = inputString;
var hyphenIndex = inputString.IndexOf('-');
if (hyphenIndex > -1)
{
outPutString = inputString.Substring(0, hyphenIndex);
}
return outPutString;

Get data from file and split into an array

I have information formatted on a webpage which looks like the following:
Key=submission_id, Value=300348811884547965
Key=formID, Value=50514289063151
Key=ip, Value=xxxxx
Key=editimage, Value=Yes
Key=openimage5, Value=Yes
Key=copyimage, Value=Yes
How would I go about getting the value of each line, I was thinking of doing some sort of next() while getting all data after the 2nd equal sign of each line however I am unsure on how to do it in c#. I am sure there is a better solution then what I have in mind. Please let me know your thoughts.

A regex works nicely for parsing data structured in this way.
Regex splitter = new Regex(#"Key=([\w]+), Value=([\w]+)");
string path = "TextFile1.txt";
string[] lines = System.IO.File.ReadAllLines(path);
lines.ToList().ForEach((s) =>
{
Match match = splitter.Match(s);
if (match.Success)
{
Console.WriteLine("The Key is " + match.Groups[1] + " and the value is " + match.Groups[2]);
}
});

How to get rid of unwanted spaces after using ToString() in C#?

This might be a problem with Session and not ToString(), I'm not sure.
I have two .aspx pages and I want to pass an IP address from a datatable from one page to the other. When I do this, spaces get added that I don't want. The simple version of the code is this:
first .aspx page
int num = DropDownList1.SelectedIndex;
DataView tempDV = SqlDataSource2.Select(DataSourceSelectArguments.Empty) as DataView;
Session["camera"] = tempDV.Table.Rows[num].ItemArray[2];
Response.Redirect("test.aspx");
test.aspx page
string ipCamAdd = Session["camera"].ToString();
TextBox1.Text = "http://" + ipCamAdd + "/jpg/image.jpg?resolution=320x240";
what I want to print is
http ://ipadd/jpg/image.jpg?resolution=320x240
but what prints out is
http//ipaddress /jpg/image.jpg?resolution=320x240
how can I fix this?
Also, I asked this question hoping someone could tell me why this is happening as well. Sorry for the mistake.

Try this:
string ipCamAdd = Session["camera"].Trim().ToString();
For the valid concern, Session["camera"] could be null, add function such as the following to your code
static string ToSafeString(string theVal)
{
string theAns;
theAns = (theVal==null ? "" : theVal);
return theAns;
}
Then use:
string ipCamAdd = Session["camera"].ToSafeString().Trim();

You can use string.Replace if you just want to get rid of the spaces:
TextBox1.Text = "http://" + (ipCamAdd ?? "").Replace(" ", "") + "/jpg/image.jpg?resolution=320x240";

Trim the result before setting to session.
Session["camera"] = tempDV.Table.Rows[num].ItemArray[2].Trim();
Seems In SQL your data type is char(*) if you convert the data type to varchar and re enter data, you wont get any additional spaces

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]);

How to extract range of characters from a string

If I have a string such as the following:
String myString = "SET(someRandomName, \"hi\", u)";
where I know that "SET(" will always exists in the string, but the length of "someRandomName" is unknown, how would I go about deleting all the characters from "(" to the first instance of """? So to re-iterate, I would like to delete this substring: "SET(someRandomName, \"" from myString.
How would I do this in C#.Net?
EDIT: I don't want to use regex for this.

Providing the string will always have this structure, the easiest is to use String.IndexOf() to look-up the index of the first occurence of ". String.Substring() then gives you appropriate portion of the original string.
Likewise you can use String.LastIndexOf() to find the index of the first " from the end of the string. Then you will be able to extract just the value of the second argument ("hi" in your sample).
You will end up with something like this:
int begin = myString.IndexOf('"');
int end = myString.LastIndexOf('"');
string secondArg = myString.Substring(begin, end - begin + 1);
This will yield "\"hi\"" in secondArg.
UPDATE: To remove a portion of the string, use the String.Remove() method:
int begin = myString.IndexOf('(');
int end = myString.IndexOf('"');
string altered = myString.Remove(begin + 1, end - begin - 1);
This will yield "SET(\"hi\", u)" in altered.

I know it's been years, but .Net been has also evolved in the meantime.
Consider using range operator in case anyone looking here for an answer.
Assuming that Set( and \"hi\", u) is constant value (8 digit without the escapes):
var sub = myString[^4...^8];
myString.Replace(sub, replaceValue);
more examples and a good explanation in this article or of course in microsoft docs

This is pretty awful, but this will accomplish what you want with a simple linq statement. Just presenting as an alternative to the IndexOf answers.
string myString = "SET(someRandomName, \"hi\", 0)";
string fixedStr = new String( myString.ToCharArray().Take( 4 ).Concat( myString.ToCharArray().SkipWhile( c => c != '"' ) ).ToArray() );
yields: SET("hi", 0)
Note: the skip is hard-coded for 4 characters, you could alter it to skip over the characters in an array that contains them instead.

I assume you want to transform
SET(someRandomName, "hi", u)
into:
SET(u)
To achieve that, you can use:
String newString = "SET(" + myString.Substring(myString.LastIndexOf(',') + 1).Trim();
To explain this bit by bit:
myString.LastIndexOf(',')
will give you the index (position) of your last , character. Increment it by 1 to get the start index of the third argument in your SET function.
myString.Substring(myString.LastIndexOf(',') + 1)
The Substring method will eliminate all characters up to the specified position. In this case, we’re eliminating everything up to (and including) the last ,. In the example above, this would eliminate the SET(someRandomName, "hi", part, and leave us with u).
The Trim is necessary simply to remove the leading space character before your u.
Finally, we prepend SET( to our substring (since we had formerly removed it due to our Substring).
Edit: Based on your comment below (which contradicts what you asked in your question), you can use:
String newString = "SET(" + myString.Substring(myString.IndexOf(',') + 1).Trim();