String split on words and queued punctuation characters - c#

Here is the pattern I use for now:
string pattern = #"^(\s+|\d+|\w+|[^\d\s\w])+$";
Regex regex = new Regex(pattern);
if (regex.IsMatch(inputString))
{
Match match = regex.Match(inputString);
foreach (Capture capture in match.Groups[1].Captures)
{
if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(capture.Value))
tmpList.Add(capture.Value);
}
}
return tmpList.ToArray<string>();
With this I retrieve an array of strings, on item for each word and one item for each punctuation character.
What I'd like to achieve now is grouping queued punctuation chars in only one item, i.e. for now if there are three dots one after the other, I get three items in my array each containing a dot. Ultimately I'd like to have one item with three dots (or any other punctuation char for that matter).

Try this regex:
^(\s+|\d+|\w+|[^\d\s\w]+)+$
Description

Try with following pattern. I added an extra +. Let me know if you intended something else. Hope it helps.
string pattern = #"^(\s+|\d+|\w+|[^\d\s\w]+)+$";
For inputString = "abc;..cbe;aaa...kjaskjas" I get this result:
abc
;..
cbe
;
aaa
...
kjaskjas

Related

Regex for splitting string into a collection of two based on a pattern

Using the C# Regex.Split method, I would like to split strings that will always start with RepXYZ, Where the XYZ bit is a number that will always have either 3 or 4 characters.
Examples
"Rep1007$chkCheckBox"
"Rep127_Group_Text"
The results should be:
{"Rep1007","$chkCheckBox"}
{"Rep127","_Group_Text"}
So far I have tried (Rep)[\d]{3,4} and ((Rep)[\d]{3,4})+ but both of those are giving me unwanted results
Using Regex.Split often results in empty or unwanted items in the resulting array. Using (Rep)[\d]{3,4} in Regex.Split, will put Rep without the numbers into the resulting array. (Rep[\d]{3,4}) will put the Rep and the numbers into the result, but since the match is at the start, there will be an empty item in the array.
I suggest using Regex.Match here:
var match = Regex.Match(text, #"^(Rep\d+)(.*)$");
if (match.Success)
{
Console.WriteLine(match.Groups[1].Value);
Console.WriteLine(match.Groups[2].Value);
}
See the regex demo
Details:
^ - start of string
(Rep\d+) - capturing group 1: Rep and any one or more digits
(.*) - capturing group 2: any one or more chars other than a newline, as many as possible
$ - end of string.
A splitting approach is better implemented with a lookaround-based regex:
var results = Regex.Split(text, #"(?<=^Rep\d+)(?=[$_])");
See this regex demo.
(?<=^Rep\d+)(?=[$_]) splits a string at the location that is immediately preceded with Rep and one or more digits at the start of the string, and immediately followed with $ or _.
Try splitting on the regex pattern on either $ or _:
string input = "Rep127_Group_Text";
string[] parts = input.Split(new[] { '$', '_' }, 2);
foreach (string part in parts)
{
Console.WriteLine(part);
}
This prints:
Rep127
Group_Text

C# RegEx - get only first match in string

I've got an input string that looks like this:
level=<device[195].level>&name=<device[195].name>
I want to create a RegEx that will parse out each of the <device> tags, for example, I'd expect two items to be matched from my input string: <device[195].level> and <device[195].name>.
So far I've had some luck with this pattern and code, but it always finds both of the device tags as a single match:
var pattern = "<device\\[[0-9]*\\]\\.\\S*>";
Regex rgx = new Regex(pattern);
var matches = rgx.Matches(httpData);
The result is that matches will contain a single result with the value <device[195].level>&name=<device[195].name>
I'm guessing there must be a way to 'terminate' the pattern, but I'm not sure what it is.
Use non-greedy quantifiers:
<device\[\d+\]\.\S+?>
Also, use verbatim strings for escaping regexes, it makes them much more readable:
var pattern = #"<device\[\d+\]\.\S+?>";
As a side note, I guess in your case using \w instead of \S would be more in line with what you intended, but I left the \S because I can't know that.
depends how much of the structure of the angle blocks you need to match, but you can do
"\\<device.+?\\>"
I want to create a RegEx that will parse out each of the <device> tags
I'd expect two items to be matched from my input string:
1. <device[195].level>
2. <device[195].name>
This should work. Get the matched group from index 1
(<device[^>]*>)
Live demo
String literals for use in programs:
#"(<device[^>]*>)"
Change your repetition operator and use \w instead of \S
var pattern = #"<device\[[0-9]+\]\.\w+>";
String s = #"level=<device[195].level>&name=<device[195].name>";
foreach (Match m in Regex.Matches(s, #"<device\[[0-9]+\]\.\w+>"))
Console.WriteLine(m.Value);
Output
<device[195].level>
<device[195].name>
Use named match groups and create a linq entity projection. There will be two matches, thus separating the individual items:
string data = "level=<device[195].level>&name=<device[195].name>";
string pattern = #"
(?<variable>[^=]+) # get the variable name
(?:=<device\[) # static '=<device'
(?<index>[^\]]+) # device number index
(?:]\.) # static ].
(?<sub>[^>]+) # Get the sub command
(?:>&?) # Match but don't capture the > and possible &
";
// Ignore pattern whitespace is to document the pattern, does not affect processing.
var items = Regex.Matches(data, pattern, RegexOptions.IgnorePatternWhitespace)
.OfType<Match>()
.Select (mt => new
{
Variable = mt.Groups["variable"].Value,
Index = mt.Groups["index"].Value,
Sub = mt.Groups["sub"].Value
})
.ToList();
items.ForEach(itm => Console.WriteLine ("{0}:{1}:{2}", itm.Variable, itm.Index, itm.Sub));
/* Output
level:195:level
name:195:name
*/

C# creating a string which will be parsed, based on user input fails when they enter a tokenizing character

I know what is going on, but i was trying to make it so that my .Split() ignores certain characters.
sample:
1|2|3|This is a string|type:1
the parts "This is a string" is user input The user could enter in a splitting character, | in this case, so i wanted to escape it with \|. It still seems to split based on that. This is being done on the web, so i was thinking that a smart move might actually be just JSON.encode(user_in) to get around it?
1|2|3| This is \|a string|type:1
Still splits on the escaped character because i didnt define it as a special case. How would i get around this issue?
you could use Regex.Split instead and then split on | not preceded by a .
// -- regex for | not preceded by a \
string input = #"1|2|3|This is a string\|type:1";
string pattern = #"(?<!\\)[|]";
string[] substrings = Regex.Split(input, pattern);
foreach (string match in substrings)
{
Console.WriteLine("'{0}'", match);
}
You can replace your delimiter with something special first, next split it and finally replace it back.
var initial = #"1|2|3|This is \| a string|type:1";
var modified = initial.Replace(#"\|", "###");
IEnumerable<string> result = modified.Split('|');
result = result.Select(i => i.Replace("###", #"\|"));

Removing words with special characters in them

I have a long string composed of a number of different words.
I want to go through all of them, and if the word contains a special character or number (except '-'), or starts with a Capital letter, I want to delete it (the whole word not just that character). For all intents and purposes 'foreign' letters can count as special characters.
The obvious solution is to run a loop through each word (after splitting it) and then a loop through each character - but I'm hoping there's a faster way of doing it? Perhaps using Regex but I've almost no experience with it.
Thanks
ADDED:
(What I want for example:)
Input: "this Is an Example of 5 words in an input like-so from example.com"
Output: {this,an,of,words,in,an,input,like-so,from}
(What I've tried so far)
List<string> response = new List<string>();
string[] splitString = text.Split(' ');
foreach (string s in splitString)
{
bool add = true;
foreach (char c in s.ToCharArray())
{
if (!(c.Equals('-') || (Char.IsLetter(c) && Char.IsLower(c))))
{
add = false;
break;
}
if (add)
{
response.Add(s);
}
}
}
Edit 2:
For me a word should be a number of characters (a..z) seperated by a space. ,/./!/... at the end shouldn't count for the 'special character' condition (which is really mostly just to remove urls or the like)
So:
"I saw a dog. It was black!"
should result in
{saw,a,dog,was,black}
So you want to find all "words" that only contain characters a-z or -, for words that are separated by spaces?
A regex like this will find such words:
(?<!\S)[a-z-]+(?!\S)
To also allow for words that end with single punctuation, you could use:
(?<!\S)[a-z-]+(?=[,.!?:;]?(?!\S))
Example (ideone):
var re = #"(?<!\S)[a-z-]+(?=[,.!?:;]?(?!\S))";
var str = "this, Is an! Example of 5 words in an input like-so from example.com foo: bar?";
var m = Regex.Matches(str, re);
Console.WriteLine("Matched: ");
foreach (Match i in m)
Console.Write(i + " ");
Notice the punctuation in the string.
Output:
Matched:
this an of words in an input like-so from foo bar
How about this?
(?<=^|\s+)(?[a-z-]+)(?=$|\s+)
Edit: Meant (?<=^|\s+)(?<word>[a-z\-]+)(?=(?:\.|,|!|\.\.\.)?(?:$|\s+))
Rules:
Word can only be preceded by start of line or some number of whitespace characters
Word can only be followed by end of line or some number of whitespace characters (Edit supports words ending with periods, commas, exclamation points, and ellipses)
Word can only contain lower case (latin) letters and dashes
The named group containing each word is "word"
Have a look at Microsoft's How to: Search Strings Using Regular Expressions (C# Programming Guide) - it's about regexes in C#.
List<string> strings = new List<string>() {"asdf", "sdf-sd", "sdfsdf"};
for (int i = strings.Count-1; i > 0; i--)
{
if (strings[i].Contains("-"))
{
strings.Remove(strings[i]);
}
}
This could be a starting point. right now it just checks only for "." as a special char. This outputs : "this an of words in an like-so from"
string pattern = #"[A-Z]\w+|\w*[0-9]+\w*|\w*[\.]+\w*";
string line = "this Is an Example of 5 words in an in3put like-so from example.com";
System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex r = new System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex(pattern);
line = r.Replace(line,"");
You can do this in two ways, the white-list way and the black-list way. With a white-list you define the set of characters that you consider to be acceptable and with the black-list its the opposite.
Lets assume the white-list way and that you accept only characters a-z, A-Z and the - character. Additionally you have the rule that the first character of a word cannot be an upper case character.
With this you can do something like this:
string target = "This is a white-list example: (Foo, bar1)";
var matches = Regex.Matches(target, #"(?:\b)(?<Word>[a-z]{1}[a-zA-Z\-]*)(?:\b)");
string[] words = matches.Cast<Match>().Select(m => m.Value).ToArray();
Console.WriteLine(string.Join(", ", words));
Outputs:
// is, a, white-list, example
You can use look-aheads and look-behinds to do this. Here's a regex that matches your example:
(?<=\s|^)[a-z-]+(?=\s|$)
The explanation is: match one or more alphabetic characters (lowercase only, plus hyphen), as long as what comes before the characters is whitespace (or the start of the string), and as long as what comes after is whitespace or the end of the string.
All you need to do now is plug that into System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Matches(input, regexString) to get your list of words.
Reference: http://www.mikesdotnetting.com/Article/46/CSharp-Regular-Expressions-Cheat-Sheet

Regex to remove all special characters from string?

I'm completely incapable of regular expressions, and so I need some help with a problem that I think would best be solved by using regular expressions.
I have list of strings in C#:
List<string> lstNames = new List<string>();
lstNames.add("TRA-94:23");
lstNames.add("TRA-42:101");
lstNames.add("TRA-109:AD");
foreach (string n in lstNames) {
// logic goes here that somehow uses regex to remove all special characters
string regExp = "NO_IDEA";
string tmp = Regex.Replace(n, regExp, "");
}
I need to be able to loop over the list and return each item without any special characters. For example, item one would be "TRA9423", item two would be "TRA42101" and item three would be TRA109AD.
Is there a regular expression that can accomplish this for me?
Also, the list contains more than 4000 items, so I need the search and replace to be efficient and quick if possible.
EDIT:
I should have specified that any character beside a-z, A-Z and 0-9 is special in my circumstance.
It really depends on your definition of special characters. I find that a whitelist rather than a blacklist is the best approach in most situations:
tmp = Regex.Replace(n, "[^0-9a-zA-Z]+", "");
You should be careful with your current approach because the following two items will be converted to the same string and will therefore be indistinguishable:
"TRA-12:123"
"TRA-121:23"
[^a-zA-Z0-9] is a character class matches any non-alphanumeric characters.
Alternatively, [^\w\d] does the same thing.
Usage:
string regExp = "[^\w\d]";
string tmp = Regex.Replace(n, regExp, "");
This should do it:
[^a-zA-Z0-9]
Basically it matches all non-alphanumeric characters.
You can use:
string regExp = "\\W";
This is equivalent to Daniel's "[^a-zA-Z0-9]"
\W matches any nonword character. Equivalent to the Unicode categories [^\p{Ll}\p{Lu}\p{Lt}\p{Lo}\p{Nd}\p{Pc}].
For my purposes I wanted all English ASCII chars, so this worked.
html = Regex.Replace(html, "[^\x00-\x80]+", "")
Depending on your definition of "special character", I think "[^a-zA-Z0-9]" would probably do the trick. That would find anything that is not a small letter, a capital letter, or a digit.
tmp = Regex.Replace(n, #"\W+", "");
\w matches letters, digits, and underscores, \W is the negated version.
If you don't want to use Regex then another option is to use
char.IsLetterOrDigit
You can use this to loop through each char of the string and only return if true.
public static string Letters(this string input)
{
return string.Concat(input.Where(x => char.IsLetter(x) && !char.IsSymbol(x) && !char.IsWhiteSpace(x)));
}

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