String Between Function?

Question

Is there a way to get the string between.. lets say quote " The problem with using Indexof and substring is that it gets the first " and last " but not the pair. Like

"Hello" "WHY ARE" "WWWWWEEEEEE"

It will get

Hello" "WHY ARE" "WWWWWEEEEEE

I want it to get to array > Hello, WHY ARE, WWWWEEEEEE

Is there any way to do this?

Answer 1

string s = '"Hello" "WHY ARE" "WWWWWEEEEEE"'
string[] words = s.Split('"');
// words is now ["Hello", " ", "WHY ARE", " ", "WWWWWEEEEEE"]

If you don't want the empty strings, you can split by '" "', in which case you will get ['"Hello', "WHY ARE", 'WWWWWEEEEEE"'].

On the other hand, using regular expressions could be the best solution for what you want. I'm not a C# expert, so I can't give the code from the top of my head, but this is the regex you'll want to use: "(.*?)"

Answer 2

Something like this?

StringCollection resultList = new StringCollection();
try 
{
    Regex regexObj = new Regex("\"([^\"]+)\"");
    Match matchResult = regexObj.Match(subjectString);

    while (matchResult.Success) 
    {
        resultList.Add(matchResult.Groups[1].Value);
        matchResult = matchResult.NextMatch();
    } 
}
catch (ArgumentException ex) 
{
    // Syntax error in the regular expression
}

If subjectString was "Hello" "WHY ARE" "WWWWWEEEEEE", that should give you a list containing:

• Hello
• WHY ARE
• WWWWWEEEEEE

---

A more compact example which uses the static Regex class instead, and just writes the matches to console instead of adding to a collection:

var subject = "\"Hello\" \"WHY ARE\" \"WWWWWEEEEEE\"";
var match = Regex.Match(subject, "\"([^\"]+)\"");

while (match.Success)
{
    Console.WriteLine(match.Groups[1].Value);
    match = match.NextMatch();
}

Answer 3

string s = '"Hello" "WHY ARE" "WWWWWEEEEEE"
s.replace("\" \"", "!*!"); // custom seperator
s.Replace('"', string.empty);
string[] words = s.Split('!*!');

Should do the trick,

Kindness,

Dan

Answer 4

You can also use the String.IndexOf(char value, int startIndex) method which has, as its parameter says, a start index from which the scan is started.

int start = 0;
do
{
  int i1 = s.IndexOf('=', start);
  if (i1 < 0) break;

  int i2 = s.IndexOf('=', i1 + 1);
  if (i2 < 0) break;

  yield return s.Substring(i1, i2 - i1);
  start = i2 + 1;
}
while (start < s.Length);