C# Regex Replacing

Question

So basically, I have a string like this:

    Some Text Here | More Text Here | Even More Text Here

And I want to be able to replace the text between the two bars with New Text, so it would end up like:

    Some Text Here | New Text | Even More Text Here

I'm assuming the best way is with regexes... so I tried a bunch of things but couldn't get anything to work... Help?

Quick Joe Smith · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-13 02:37:42Z

5

For a simple case like this, the best apprach is a simple string split:

string input = "foo|bar|baz";
string[] things = input.Split('|');
things[1] = "roflcopter";
string output = string.Join("|", things); // output contains "foo|roflcopter|baz";

This relies on a few things:

There are always 3 pipe-delimited text strings.
There is no insignificant spaces between the pipes.

To correct the second, do something like:

for (int i = 0; i < things.Length; ++i)
    things[i] = things[i].Trim();

To remove whitespace from the beginning and end of each element.

The general rule with regexes is that they should usually be your last resort; not your first. :)

answered Mar 13, 2011 at 2:37

Quick Joe Smith

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2 Comments

Nate Over a year ago

+1 for pragmatic approach. I like regex as much as the next guy, but if a simpler approach works I'm all for it.

Quick Joe Smith Over a year ago

Indeed. It's also very easy to write seemingly innocuous regexes that perform appallingly (often in cases where it cannot find a match). If I can get what I want with basic string methods like Split, StartsWith, EndsWith or Contains then I usually will.

Chandu · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-13 02:41:02Z

2

If you want to use regex...try this:

String testString = "Some Text Here | More Text Here | Even More Text Here";
Console.WriteLine(Regex.Replace(testString,
                        @"(.*)\|([^|]+)\|(.*)",
                        "$1| New Text |$3",
                         RegexOptions.IgnoreCase));

answered Mar 13, 2011 at 2:41

Chandu

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