How do I extract a substring from a string until the second space is encountered?

Question

i have a string like this:

"o1 1232.5467 1232.5467 1232.5467 1232.5467 1232.5467 1232.5467"

How do I extract only "o1 1232.5467"?

The number of characters to be extracted are not the same always.. hence I want to extract until the second space is encountered.

Answer 1

Use a regex: .

Match m = Regex.Match(text, @"(.+? .+?) ");
if (m.Success) {
    do_something_with(m.Groups[1].Value);
}

Answer 2

A straightforward approach would be the following:

String[] tokens = str.split(" ");
String retVal = tokens[0] + " " + tokens[1];

Answer 3

Just use String.IndexOf twice as in:

     string str = "My Test String";
     int index = str.IndexOf(' ');
     index = str.IndexOf(' ', index + 1);
     string result = str.Substring(0, index);

Answer 4

Get the position of the first space:

int space1 = theString.IndexOf(' ');

The the position of the next space after that:

int space2 = theString.IndexOf(' ', space1 + 1);

Get the part of the string up to the second space:

string firstPart = theString.Substring(0, space2);

The above code put togehter into a one-liner:

string firstPart = theString.Substring(0, theString.IndexOf(' ', theString.IndexOf(' ') + 1));

Answer 5

s.Substring(0, s.IndexOf(" ", s.IndexOf(" ") + 1))

Answer 6

string testString = "o1 1232.5467 1232.5467.........";

string secondItem = testString.Split(new char[]{' '}, 3)[1];

Answer 7

Something like this:

int i = str.IndexOf(' ');
i = str.IndexOf(' ', i + 1);
return str.Substring(i);

Answer 8

There are shorter ways of doing it like others have said, but you can also check each character until you encounter a second space yourself, then return the corresponding substring.

static string Extract(string str)
{
    bool end = false;
    int length = 0 ;
    foreach (char c in str)
    {
        if (c == ' ' && end == false)
        {
            end = true;
        }
        else if (c == ' ' && end == true)
        {
            break;
        }

        length++;
    }

    return str.Substring(0, length);
}

Answer 9

You could try to find the indexOf "o1 " first. Then extract it. After this, Split the string using the chars "1232.5467":

        string test = "o1 1232.5467 1232.5467 1232.5467 1232.5467 1232.5467 1232.5467";
        string header = test.Substring(test.IndexOf("o1 "), "o1 ".Length);
        test = test.Substring("o1 ".Length, test.Length - "o1 ".Length);
        string[] content = test.Split(' ');

Answer 10

I would recommend a regular expression for this since it handles cases that you might not have considered.

var input = "o1 1232.5467 1232.5467 1232.5467 1232.5467 1232.5467 1232.5467";
var regex = new Regex(@"^(.*? .*?) ");
var match = regex.Match(input);
if (match.Success)
{
    Console.WriteLine(string.Format("'{0}'", match.Groups[1].Value));
}

Answer 11

:P

Just a note, I think that most of the algorithms here wont check if you have 2 or more spaces together, so it might get a space as the second word.

I don't know if it the best way, but I had a little fun linqing it :P (the good thing is that it let you choose the number of spaces/words you want to take)

        var text = "a sdasdf ad  a";
        int numSpaces = 2;
        var result = text.TakeWhile(c =>
            {
                if (c==' ')
                    numSpaces--;

                if (numSpaces <= 0)
                    return false;

                return true;
            });
        text = new string(result.ToArray());

I also got @ho's answer and made it into a cycle so you could again use it for as many words as you want :P

        string str = "My Test String hello world";
        int numberOfSpaces = 3;
        int index = str.IndexOf(' ');     

        while (--numberOfSpaces>0)
        {
            index = str.IndexOf(' ', index + 1);
        }

        string result = str.Substring(0, index);

Answer 12

I was thinking about this problem for my own code and even though I probably will end up using something simpler/faster, here's another Linq solution that's similar to one that @Francisco added.

I just like it because it reads the most like what you actually want to do: "Take chars while the resulting substring has fewer than 2 spaces."

string input = "o1 1232.5467 1232.5467 1232.5467 1232.5467 1232.5467 1232.5467";
var substring = input.TakeWhile((c0, index) => 
                                input.Substring(0, index + 1).Count(c => c == ' ') < 2);
string result = new String(substring.ToArray());