Parsing Multiple Regular Expressions Performance

Question

I am attempting to split validated addresses into the base components (Unit #, Street #, Street Name etc). To do this I am working backwards (right to left) through the string:

• Match [A-Z'-] characters => Street Name
• Match [\d-]+[A-Za-z]{0,1} => Street Number (this matches things such as 10-12 or 11B, there will only be 0 or 1 letter)
• Match the rest of the string to Unit Number

Now, I am able to write the three regex patterns to do this matching. What I am unsure of is how to use them. This will be used in batch processing of addresses.

My ideas are:

• Run each pattern over the address and save each match on the appropriate address object property
• Some sort of match/replace to shorten the string after each step (I was going to use look forwards and look backs)

Any advice on how the most efficient use of regular expressions would be most helpful.

EDIT As suggested I used groups to do this instead. In case anyone wants to see what I came up with:

(?<unit>(.*))\s(?<number>([\d-]+[A-Za-z]{0,1}))\s+(?<name>([\sA-Za-z'-]+$))

NB: This is for a very particular format of addresses, specific to what I need.

Answer 1

Regular expressions are capable of matching the entire string; just enclose the parts in parentheses to form capturing groups, e.g.:

^(\w*)\s*([\d-]+[A-Za-z]?)\s*(.+)$

Then examine the Match.Groups collection for the parts you need.