Can I use regular expressions with String.Replace in C#?

Question

For example I have code below string txt="I have strings like West, and West; and west, and Western."

I would like to replace the word west or West with some other word. But I would like not to replace West in Western.

1. Can I use regular expression in string.replace? I used inputText.Replace("(\\sWest.\\s)",temp); It dos not work.

Answer 1

To replace the whole word (rather than part of the word):

string s = Regex.Replace(s, @"\bwest\b", "something");

Answer 2

Have you looked at Regex.Replace? Also, be sure to catch the return value; Replace (via any string mechanism) returns a new string - it doesn't do an in-place replace.

Answer 3

The String.Replace method can only replace substrings, but there is a Regex.replace method that does what you want: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.text.regularexpressions.regex.replace.aspx

Answer 4

Try using the System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex class. It has a static Replace method. I'm not good with regular expressions, but something like

string outputText = Regex.Replace(inputText, "(\\sWest.\\s)", temp);

should work, if your regular expression is correct.

Answer 5

USe this code if you want it to be case insensitive

string pattern = @"\bwest\b";
string modifiedString = Regex.Replace(input, pattern, strReplacement, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

Answer 6

I agree with Robert Harvey's solution except for one small modification:

s = Regex.Replace(s, @"\bwest\b", "something", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

This will replace both "West" and "west" with your new word