CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#
nicosantangelo
nicosantangelo

Reputation: 13716

Odd behaviour replacing "\"

I have this issue in which I have a strnig with among other things the literal expression "\\" on several occasions and I want to replace it with "\", when I try to replace it with string.replace, only replcaes the first occurrence, and if I do it with regular expression it doesn't replace it at all

I checked with some RegEx Testers online and supposedly my code is ok, returns what I meant to, but my code doesn't work at all

With string.replace

example = "\\\\url.com\\place\\anotherplace\\extraplace\\";

example = example.replace("\\\\","\\");

returns example == "\\url.com\\place\\anotherplace\\extraplace\\";

With RegEx

example = Regex.Replace(example,"\\\\","\\");

returns example = "\\\\url.com\\place\\anotherplace\\extraplace\\";

It is the same case if I use literals (On the Replace function parameters use (@"\\", @"\") gives the same result as above).

Thanks!

EDIT:

I think my ultimate goal was confusing so I'll update it here, what I want to do is:

Input: variable that holds the string: "\\\\url.com\\place\\anotherplace\\extraplace\\"

Process

Output variable that holds the string "\\url.com\place\anotherplace\extraplace\" (so I can send it to ffmpeg and it recognizes it as a valid route)

Upvotes: 5

Views: 155

Answers (4)

hometoast
hometoast

Reputation: 11782

change this: 

example = "\\\\url.com\\place\\anotherplace\\extraplace\\";

to this

example = @"\\\\url.com\\place\\anotherplace\\extraplace\\";

It wasn't the Regex.Replace parameters that was the problem.

Upvotes: 5

Asif Mushtaq
Asif Mushtaq

Reputation: 13150

You should change it to following

example = example.replace(@"\\", @"\");

Upvotes: 1

Jon
Jon

Reputation: 3065

That appears to be the expected behavior.

In the String.Replace case: Initially, example contains a string that starts with two backslashes, and contains a few single backslashes elsewhere in the string. You then attempted to replace all occurrences of double backslashes with a single backslash, which worked and produced a string that starts with a single backslash and contains a few single backslashes elsewhere in the string.

In the Regex.Replace case: The original contents of example are irrelevant in this case. Your regex pattern is a double backslash, which when interpreted as a regex pattern, means "find a single backslash". You then replace this pattern with a single backslash, which results in no change to the string.

Upvotes: 1

Ian G
Ian G

Reputation: 30234

You only have one occurrence of \\\\ in your string. So it is doing exactly what you asked it to do.

Without escaping (ie without adding extra /'s)

  • What is your actual input?
  • What is your desired output?

Upvotes: 1

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