C# Regex Split - everything inside square brackets

Question

I'm currently trying to split a string in C# (latest .NET and Visual Studio 2008), in order to retrieve everything that's inside square brackets and discard the remaining text.

E.g.: "H1-receptor antagonist [HSA:3269] [PATH:hsa04080(3269)]"

In this case, I'm interested in getting "HSA:3269" and "PATH:hsa04080(3269)" into an array of strings.

How can this be achieved?

Answer 1

Split won't help you here; you need to use regular expressions:

// using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
// pattern = any number of arbitrary characters between square brackets.
var pattern = @"\[(.*?)\]";
var query = "H1-receptor antagonist [HSA:3269] [PATH:hsa04080(3269)]";
var matches = Regex.Matches(query, pattern);

foreach (Match m in matches) {
    Console.WriteLine(m.Groups[1]);
}

Yields your results.

Answer 2

Err, how about regex split then?! Untested:

string input = "H1-receptor antagonist [HSA:3269] [PATH:hsa04080(3269)]";   
string pattern = @"([)|(])";

foreach (string result in Regex.Split(input, pattern)) 
{
   Console.WriteLine("'{0}'", result);
}