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Deal with '#' through regex

Quick question , I have been trying to match any word containing a '#' from a string list and remove it, but I don't know how to handle it . been playing around on http://regexhero.net/tester/ trying but to no avail.
Essentially if it comes across #ff or wha#s up i will just regex.replace them.
any ideas on the Regular expression to use?.
Thanks.

Don't use regex - just use string.replace - it's a lot faster.

I have a previous answer that covers some hashtag matching approaches.
In summary, if you are pulling statuses containing hashtags from Twitter, you no longer need to find them yourself. You can now specify the include_entities parameter to have Twitter automatically call out mentions, links, and hashtags (if the method you are calling, like statuses/show supports this parameter.
If you just need the regular expression to locate the hashtags and capture it's elements, Twitter provides it in an open source library that contains the following pattern.
(^|[^0-9A-Z&/]+)(#|\uFF03)([0-9A-Z_]*[A-Z_]+[a-z0-9_\\u00c0-\\u00d6\\u00d8-\\u00f6\\u00f8-\\u00ff]*)
More detail and additional links are provided in the original answer.

So you're trying to remove any words containing a #?
If so, give this a try...
\w*#\w*
And replace with nothing, like so...
http://regexhero.net/tester/?id=cda1e713-bdab-4aa2-b63d-a87e9b2c9bce
apple# orange ban#ana becomes orange
But if you're simply trying to remove all instances of #, then String.Replace is the better choice. myString = myString.Replace("#", "");

RegEx replace with calculations?

Is it possible somehow to do a RegEx-replace with a calculation in the result? (in VS2010)
Such as:
Grid\.Row\=\"{[0-9]+}\"
to
Grid.Row="eval(int(\1) + 1)"

You can use a MatchEvaluator do achieve this, like
String s = Regex.Replace("1239", #"\d", m => (Int32.Parse(m.ToString()) + 1).ToString());
Output: 23410
Edit:
I just noticed... if you mean "using the VS2010 find-replace feature" and not "using C#", then the answer is "no", i am afraid.

You could always use capturing to retrieve any values you need for your calculation and then perform a RegEx Replace with a new RegEx that's constructed from you're equation and any values you captured.
If the equation doesn't use anything from the input text, one RegEx would be sufficient. You'd simply construct it by concatenating the static portions together with the computed value(s).

Unfortunately, C# and .NET do not provide an eval method or equivalent. However, it is possible to either use a library for expression parsing (a quick google gave me this .NET Math Expression Parser) or write your own (which is actually pretty easy, check out the Shunting-yard Algorithm and Postfix Notation). Simply capture the group then output the group value to the library/method you have written.
Edit: I see now you want this for the VS2010 program. This is unachievable unless you write your own VS extension. You could always write a program to search and replace your code and feed the code into it, then replace it the original code with its output.

testing for "EndsWith" efficiently with a Regex

I need to build a Regex (.NET syntax) to determine if a string ends with a specific value. Specifically I need to test whether a file has a specific extension (or set of extensions).
The code I'm trying to fix was using:
.*\.(png|jpg|gif)$
which is hideously slow for failed matches in my scenario (presumably due to the backtracking.
Simply removing the .* (which is fine since the API only tests for matches and doesn't extract anything) at the beginning makes the regex much more efficient.
It still feels like it is pretty inefficient. Am I missing something obvious here?
Unfortunately, I don't control the API in question so I need a regex to do this even though I wouldn't normally consider regex to be the right tool for the job.
I also did some tests using the RegexOptions.RightToLeft and found that I could squeeze a little more performance out of my test case with ^.*\.(png|jpg|gif)$, but I can't find a way to specify the RightToLeft option within the string of the regex itself so I don't think I can use it.

I don't have access to C# so I can't try this... but you should be able to avoid too much backtracking by forcing the engine to find the end of the string first, then matching the extensions:
$(?<=\.(gif|png|jpg))
I'm not sure of the effect the look-behind has on performance, though.

Really, you could also just drop Regex altogether, and use String.EndsWidth, with the following :
var extensions = new String[] { ".png", ".jpg", ".gif" };
extensions.Any(ext => "something".EndsWith(ext));
I usually have the feeling that it ends up being faster to use simple string functions for cases like this rather than trying to find a clever way to use an efficient regex, in terms of runtime and/or development time, unless you are comfortable with and know what is efficient in terms of Regex.

Make it look specifically for a period instead of any character preceding the extension:
\.(png|jpg|gif)$
This will make it safer (won't match x.xgif) and it will not have to do any backtracking at all until it found a period (as opposed to backtracking on every character).

If you can change the code, why can't you use something else? You don't control the API, right, but you are changing it anyway. This I really don't understand.
Anyway, why not simply:
var AcceptedExtensions = new List<string>() { "txt", "html", "htm" };
var extension = filename.Substring(filename.LastIndexOf(".") + 1).ToLower();
return AcceptedExtensions.Contains(extension);
The IEnumerable AcceptedExtensions would be loaded from some config, the same way you load your jpg|gif|.... Or it would be a constant, whatever. You just don't need to recreate it each time you are going to use it (I doubt that this would be a bottleneck though).

You probably don't need a regular expression for this... but going with the original question:
Make sure you're using RegexOptions.Compiled to pre-compile the regular expression and then reuse your RegEx object. This avoids setting up the RegEx every time you use it, this will speed things up a lot.

Regular expression to define format of backup filenames

In the application I am currently working on, I have an option to create automatic backups of a certain file on the hard disk. What I would like to do is offer the user the possibility to configure the name of the file and its extension.
For example, the backup filename could be something like : "backup_month_year_username.bak". I had the idea to save the format in the form of a regular expression. For the example above, the regexp would look like :
"^backup_(?<Month>\d{2})_(?<Year>\d{2})_(?<Username>\w).(?<extension>bak)$"
I thought about using regex because I will also have to browse through the directory of backuped files to delete those older than a certain date. The main trouble I have now is how to create a filename using the regex. In a way I should replace the tags with the information. I could do that using regex.replace and another regex, but I feel it's a big weird doing that and it might be a better way.
Thanks
[Edit] Maybe I wasn't really clear in the first go, but the idea is of course that the user (in this case an admin that will know regex syntax) will have the possibility to modify the form of the filename, that's all the idea behind it[/Edit]

... and if the regex changes, it is next to impossible to reconstruct a string from a given regex.
Edit:
Create some predefined "place-holders": %u could be the user's name, %y could be the year, etc.:
backup_%m_%y_%u.bak
and then simple replace the %? with their actual values.

It sounds like you're trying to use the regular expression to create the file name from a pattern which the user should be able to specify.
Regular expressions can - AFAIK - not be used to create output, but only to validate input, so you'd have the user specify two things:
a file name production pattern like Bart suggested
a validation pattern in form of a regular expression that helps you split the file names into their parts
EDIT
By the way, your sample regex contains an error: The "." is use for "any character", also \w only matches one word character, so I guess you meant to write
"^backup_(?<Month>\d{2})_(?<Year>\d{2})_(?<Username>\w+)\.(?<extension>bak)$"

If the filename is always in this form, there is no reason for a regex, as it's easier to process with string.Split ...

With Bart's solution it is easy enough to split (using string.Split) the generated file name using underscore as the delimiter, to get back the information.

Ok, I think I have found a way to use only the regex. As I am using groups to get the information, I will use another regular expression to match the regular expression and replace the groups with the value:
Regex rgx = new Regex("\(\?\<Month\>.+?\)");
rgx.Replace("^backup_(?<Month>\d{2})_(?<Year>\d{2})_(?<Username>\w+)\.(?<extension>bak)$"
, DateTime.Now.Month.ToString());
Ok, it's really a hack, but at least it works and I have only one pattern defined by the user. It might not work if the regex is too complex, but I think I can deal with that problem.
What do you think?

Regex index in matching string where the match failed

I am wondering if it is possible to extract the index position in a given string where a Regex failed when trying to match it?
For example, if my regex was "abc" and I tried to match that with "abd" the match would fail at index 2.
Edit for clarification. The reason I need this is to allow me to simplify the parsing component of my application. The application is an Assmebly language teaching tool which allows students to write, compile, and execute assembly like programs.
Currently I have a tokenizer class which converts input strings into Tokens using regex's. This works very well. For example:
The tokenizer would produce the following tokens given the following input = "INP :x:":
Token.OPCODE, Token.WHITESPACE, Token.LABEL, Token.EOL
These tokens are then analysed to ensure they conform to a syntax for a given statement. Currently this is done using IF statements and is proving cumbersome. The upside of this approach is that I can provide detailed error messages. I.E
if(token[2] != Token.LABEL) { throw new SyntaxError("Expected label");}
I want to use a regular expression to define a syntax instead of the annoying IF statements. But in doing so I lose the ability to return detailed error reports. I therefore would at least like to inform the user of WHERE the error occurred.

I agree with Colin Younger, I don't think it is possible with the existing Regex class. However, I think it is doable if you are willing to sweat a little:
Get the Regex class source code
(e.g.
http://www.codeplex.com/NetMassDownloader
to download the .Net source).
Change the code to have a readonly
property with the failure index.
Make sure your code uses that Regex
rather than Microsoft's.

I guess such an index would only have meaning in some simple case, like in your example.
If you'll take a regex like "ab*c*z" (where by * I mean any character) and a string "abbbcbbcdd", what should be the index, you are talking about?
It will depend on the algorithm used for mathcing...
Could fail on "abbbc..." or on "abbbcbbc..."

I don't believe it's possible, but I am intrigued why you would want it.

In order to do that you would need either callbacks embedded in the regex (which AFAIK C# doesn't support) or preferably hooks into the regex engine. Even then, it's not clear what result you would want if backtracking was involved.

It is not possible to be able to tell where a regex fails. as a result you need to take a different approach. You need to compare strings. Use a regex to remove all the things that could vary and compare it with the string that you know it does not change.
I run into the same problem came up to your answer and had to work out my own solution. Here it is:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/11730035/637142
hope it helps