I would like to check some string for invalid characters. With invalid characters I mean characters that should not be there. What characters are these? This is different, but I think thats not that importan, important is how should I do that and what is the easiest and best way (performance) to do that?
Let say I just want strings that contains 'A-Z', 'empty', '.', '$', '0-9'
So if i have a string like "HELLO STaCKOVERFLOW" => invalid, because of the 'a'.
Ok now how to do that? I could make a List<char> and put every char in it that is not allowed and check the string with this list. Maybe not a good idea, because there a lot of chars then. But I could make a list that contains all of the allowed chars right? And then? For every char in the string I have to compare the List<char>? Any smart code for this? And another question: if I would add A-Z to the List<char> I have to add 25 chars manually, but these chars are as I know 65-90 in the ASCII Table, can I add them easier? Any suggestions? Thank you
You can use a regular expression for this:
Regex r = new Regex("[^A-Z0-9.$ ]$");
if (r.IsMatch(SomeString)) {
// validation failed
}
To create a list of characters from A-Z or 0-9 you would use a simple loop:
for (char c = 'A'; c <= 'Z'; c++) {
// c or c.ToString() depending on what you need
}
But you don't need that with the Regex - pretty much every regex engine understands the range syntax (A-Z).
I have only just written such a function, and an extended version to restrict the first and last characters when needed. The original function merely checks whether or not the string consists of valid characters only, the extended function adds two integers for the numbers of valid characters at the beginning of the list to be skipped when checking the first and last characters, in practice it simply calls the original function 3 times, in the example below it ensures that the string begins with a letter and doesn't end with an underscore.
StrChr(String, "_0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"));
StrChrEx(String, "_0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ", 11, 1));
BOOL __cdecl StrChr(CHAR* str, CHAR* chars)
{
for (int s = 0; str[s] != 0; s++)
{
int c = 0;
while (true)
{
if (chars[c] == 0)
{
return false;
}
else if (str[s] == chars[c])
{
break;
}
else
{
c++;
}
}
}
return true;
}
BOOL __cdecl StrChrEx(CHAR* str, CHAR* chars, UINT excl_first, UINT excl_last)
{
char first[2] = {str[0], 0};
char last[2] = {str[strlen(str) - 1], 0};
if (!StrChr(str, chars))
{
return false;
}
if (excl_first != 0)
{
if (!StrChr(first, chars + excl_first))
{
return false;
}
}
if (excl_last != 0)
{
if (!StrChr(last, chars + excl_last))
{
return false;
}
}
return true;
}
If you are using c#, you do this easily using List and contains. You can do this with single characters (in a string) or a multicharacter string just the same
var pn = "The String To ChecK";
var badStrings = new List<string>()
{
" ","\t","\n","\r"
};
foreach(var badString in badStrings)
{
if(pn.Contains(badString))
{
//Do something
}
}
If you're not super good with regular expressions, then there is another way to go about this in C#. Here is a block of code I wrote to test a string variable named notifName:
var alphabet = "a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p,q,r,s,t,u,v,w,x,y,z";
var numbers = "0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9";
var specialChars = " ,(,),_,[,],!,*,-,.,+,-";
var validChars = (alphabet + "," + alphabet.ToUpper() + "," + numbers + "," + specialChars).Split(',');
for (int i = 0; i < notifName.Length; i++)
{
if (Array.IndexOf(validChars, notifName[i].ToString()) < 0) {
errorFound = $"Invalid character '{notifName[i]}' found in notification name.";
break;
}
}
You can change the characters added to the array as needed. The Array IndexOf method is the key to the whole thing. Of course if you want commas to be valid, then you would need to choose a different split character.
Not enough reps to comment directly, but I recommend the Regex approach. One small caveat: you probably need to anchor both ends of the input string, and you will want at least one character to match. So (with thanks to ThiefMaster), here's my regex to validate user input for a simple arithmetical calculator (plus, minus, multiply, divide):
Regex r = new Regex(#"^[0-9\.\-\+\*\/ ]+$");
I'd go with a regex, but still need to add my 2 cents here, because all the proposed non-regex solutions are O(MN) in the worst case (string is valid) which I find repulsive for religious reasons.
Even more so when LINQ offers a simpler and more efficient solution than nesting loops:
var isInvalid = "The String To Test".Intersect("ALL_INVALID_CHARS").Any();
Related
What's the difference between double quotes and single quote in C#?
I coded a program to count how many words are in a file
using System;
using System.IO;
namespace Consoleapp05
{
class Program
{
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(#"C:\words.txt");
string text = sr.ReadToEnd();
int howmany = 0;
int howmany2 = 0;
for(int i = 0; i < text.Length; i++)
{
if(text[i] == " ")
{
howmany++;
}
}
howmany2 = howmany + 1;
Console.WriteLine("It is {0} words in the file", howmany2);
Console.ReadKey(true);
}
}
}
This gives me an error because of the double quotes. My teacher told me to use single quote instead, but he didn't tell me why. So what's the difference between double quotes and single quote in C#?
Single quotes encode a single character (data type char), while double quotes encode a string of multiple characters. The difference is similar to the difference between a single integer and an array of integers.
char c = 'c';
string s = "s"; // String containing a single character.
System.Diagnostics.Debug.Assert(s.Length == 1);
char d = s[0];
int i = 42;
int[] a = new int[] { 42 }; // Array containing a single int.
System.Diagnostics.Debug.Assert(a.Length == 1);
int j = a[0];
When you say string s = "this string" then s[0] is a character at a specific index in that string (in this case s[0] == 't').
So to answer your question, use double quotes or single quotes. You can think of the following as meaning the same thing:
string s = " word word";
// Check for space as first character using single quotes
if(s[0] == ' ') {
// Do something
}
// Check for space using string notation
if(s[0] == " "[0]) {
// Do something
}
As you can see, using a single quote to determine a single character is a lot easier than trying to convert our string into a character just for testing.
if(s[0] == " "[0]) {
// Do something
}
is really like saying:
string space = " ";
if(s[0] == space[0]) {
// Do something
}
The single quote represents a single character 'A', and double quote appends a null terminator '\0' to the end of the string literal.
" " is actually " \0" which is one byte larger than the intended size.
Single quotes instead of double ones?
Where? Here?
if(text[i] == " ")
text[i] gives a character/byte and this is compared to an array of (probably Unicode'd??) characters/bytes. That does not work well.
Say: compare '1' with 1
or "1" with "one"
or (2-1) with "eins"
What do you think are the correct answers, or isn’t there any meaningful answer anyway?
Besides that: the program will not work very well with single quotes either, given the example "words.txt" =
one word
or two words or
more words here?
You are looking for spaces. This can be done as a space in a string or as a character. So in my opinion this would work.
(By the way, if the file contains sentences with dots and someone forgot to add a space after the dot, the word will not be added to the total amount of words.)
Working on program for class call pig Latin. It works for what I need for class. It ask just to type in a phase to convert. But I notice if I type a sentence with punctuation at the end it will mess up the last word translation. Trying to figure out the best way to fix this. New at programming but I would need away for it to check last character in word to check for punctuations. Remove it before translation and then add it back. Not sure how to do that. Been reading about char.IsPunctuation. Plus not sure what part of my code I would had for that check.
public static string MakePigLatin(string str)
{
string[] words = str.Split(' ');
str = String.Empty;
for (int i = 0; i < words.Length; i++)
{
if (words[i].Length <= 1) continue;
string pigTrans = new String(words[i].ToCharArray());
pigTrans = pigTrans.Substring(1, pigTrans.Length - 1) + pigTrans.Substring(0, 1) + "ay ";
str += pigTrans;
}
return str.Trim();
}
The following should get you strings of letters for converting while passing through any non-letter characters that follow them.
Splitter based on Splitting a string in C#
public static string MakePigLatin(string str) {
MatchCollection matches = Regex.Matches(str, #"([a-zA-Z]*)([^a-zA-Z]*)");
StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder(str.Length * 2);
for (int i = 0; i < matches.Count; ++i) {
string pigTrans = matches[i].Groups[1].Captures[0].Value ?? string.Empty;
if (pigTrans.Length > 1) {
pigTrans = pigTrans.Substring(1) + pigTrans.Substring(0, 1) + "ay";
}
result.Append(pigTrans).Append(matches[i].Groups[2].Captures[0].Value);
}
return result.ToString();
}
The matches variable should contain all the match collections of 2 groups. The first group will be 0 or more letters to translate followed by a second group of 0 or more non-letters to pass through. The StringBuilder should be more memory efficient than concatenating System.String values. I gave it a starting allocation of double the initial string size just to avoid having to double the allocated space. If memory is tight, maybe 1.25 or 1.5 instead of 2 would be better, but you'd probably have to convert it back to int after. I took the length calculation off your Substring call because leaving it out grabs everything to the end of the string already.
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;
}
}
How can I get "MyLibrary.Resources.Images.Properties" and "Condo.gif" from a "MyLibrary.Resources.Images.Properties.Condo.gif" string.
I also need it to be able to handle something like "MyLibrary.Resources.Images.Properties.legend.House.gif" and return "House.gif" and "MyLibrary.Resources.Images.Properties.legend".
IndexOf LastIndexOf wouldn't work because I need the second to last '.' character.
Thanks in advance!
UPDATE
Thanks for the answers so far but I really need it to be able to handle different namespaces. So really what I'm asking is how to I split on the second to last character in a string?
You can use LINQ to do something like this:
string target = "MyLibrary.Resources.Images.Properties.legend.House.gif";
var elements = target.Split('.');
const int NumberOfFileNameElements = 2;
string fileName = string.Join(
".",
elements.Skip(elements.Length - NumberOfFileNameElements));
string path = string.Join(
".",
elements.Take(elements.Length - NumberOfFileNameElements));
This assumes that the file name part only contains a single . character, so to get it you skip the number of remaining elements.
You can either use a Regex or String.Split with '.' as the separator and return the second-to-last + '.' + last pieces.
You can look for IndexOf("MyLibrary.Resources.Images.Properties."), add that to MyLibrary.Resources.Images.Properties.".Length and then .Substring(..) from that position
If you know exactly what you're looking for, and it's trailing, you could use string.endswith. Something like
if("MyLibrary.Resources.Images.Properties.Condo.gif".EndsWith("Condo.gif"))
If that's not the case check out regular expressions. Then you could do something like
if(Regex.IsMatch("Condo.gif"))
Or a more generic way: split the string on '.' then grab the last two items in the array.
string input = "MyLibrary.Resources.Images.Properties.legend.House.gif";
//if string isn't already validated, make sure there are at least two
//periods here or you'll error out later on.
int index = input.LastIndexOf('.', input.LastIndexOf('.') - 1);
string first = input.Substring(0, index);
string second = input.Substring(index + 1);
Try splitting the string into an array, by separating it by each '.' character.
You will then have something like:
{"MyLibrary", "Resources", "Images", "Properties", "legend", "House", "gif"}
You can then take the last two elements.
Just break down and do it in a char loop:
int NthLastIndexOf(string str, char ch, int n)
{
if (n <= 0) throw new ArgumentException();
for (int idx = str.Length - 1; idx >= 0; --idx)
if (str[idx] == ch && --n == 0)
return idx;
return -1;
}
This is less expensive than trying to coax it using string splitting methods and isn't a whole lot of code.
string s = "1.2.3.4.5";
int idx = NthLastIndexOf(s, '.', 3);
string a = s.Substring(0, idx); // "1.2"
string b = s.Substring(idx + 1); // "3.4.5"
My string is:
1 STATE OF GOA THROUGH CHIEF
I want the output to be like
1 State of goa through chief
How can I keep the first letter capital and convert other to small? I had used .ToLower(), but it converts all the letters to small.
string s = "1 STATE OF GOA THROUGH CHIEF";
bool sawLetter = false;
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(s.Length);
foreach (char c in s) {
if (!sawLetter && Char.IsLetter(c)) {
sb.Append(Char.ToUpperInvariant(c));
sawLetter = true;
}
else {
sb.Append(Char.ToLowerInvariant(c));
}
}
Console.WriteLine(sb.ToString());
You could get super fancy and write this as an aggregate query in LINQ but that would be a case of fancy coding syndrome. Just make this as an extension method and move on.
Note that this is at least an order of magnitude more maintainable than using Substring to split the string into two pieces.
2Try this:
petitioner = respetMyReader["pet_name"].ToString();
petitioner = petitioner.Substring(2,1).ToUpper() + petitioner.Substring(1).ToLower();
Try putting this just before setting the value of HiddenValue4 to Fil_No...
String FinalString = fil_no.substring(1, 3) + LCase(fil_no.substring(4, (fil_no.Length - 4)));
This should keep the first three characters as whatever fil_no is and make all the others lowercase.