retrieve value inside certain pattern

Question

hi folks.,

i have a pattern as like this

"The world is #bright# and #beautiful#"

i need to retrieve the string "bright","beautiful" inside # # .. any pointers

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My solution (thanks to Bolu):

string s = "The world is #bright# and #beautiful#";
    string[] str = s.Split('#');
    for (int i = 0; i <= str.Length - 1; i++)
    {
        if (i % 2 != 0)
        {
            Response.Write(str[i] + "<br />");
        }
    }

Answer 1

As long as you can't have nested #...# sequences, #([^#]+)# will work, and will capture the content between #'s as the first backreference.

Explanation:

#        match a literal # character
(        open a capturing group
  [^     open a negated character class
     #   don't match # (since the character class is negated)
  ]+     close the class, match it one or more times
)        close the capturing group
#        match a literal # character

Answer 2

Check out the Match object:

var match = Regex.Match(yourstring, @"The world is #(.*)# and beautiful")
var bright = match.Groups[1]

Of course this breaks down when you have more than two #'s in your string. Then you probably want to do a non-greedy match. This can be done with the regex "#(.*?)#". This will match the shortest string between two sharps and still have the contents in the first group.

Answer 3

You need to set up a Capturing Group by wrapping the part you want to capture in round brackets () and optionally specifying a name for the capture:

Regex r = new Regex(@"#([^#]+?)#");

which can be accessed by using this code:

Match m = r.Match("The world is #bright# and beautiful");
string capture = m.Groups[1];

---

Or with a named parameter:

Regex r = new Regex(@"#(?<mycapture>[^#]+?)#");

which can be accessed by using this code:

Match m = r.Match("The world is #bright# and beautiful");
string capture = m.Groups["mycapture"];

Answer 4

If all you want is the string inside ##, then no need for regex, just use string.Split:

string rawstring="The world is #bright# and beautiful";
string[] tem=rawstring.Split('#');

After that, all you need is to get the even item (with index: 1,3,5....) from the string[] tem