CODEWITHSUNDEEP
.netregexcsv
steventnorris
steventnorris

Reputation: 5876

Regex commas out of expression

I am attempting to regex replace all the commas in-between quotations in a string. I can't seem to get it to match them all in a non-greedy fashion so it won't just regex the entire line. The text and regex I'm trying are below. With the regex I'm trying, it is picking up the commas in-between each element. EX "remove,comma","nocomma" yields "remove,comma" and a "," match. Also, It is picking up matches like "nocomma"," from "nocomma","nocomma".

I was working on the matching first, then narrowing it down to replacing the commas.

Using .NET 4.0

TEXT Before Regex

"remove,comma","remove,comma","nocomma","remove,comma","remove,all,commas,here,too","also,remove,commas"

TEXT I Want After Before Regex

"removecomma","removecomma","nocomma","removecomma","removeallcommasheretoo","alsoremovecommas"

REGEX

\".*?(,).*?\"

Upvotes: 1

Views: 119

Answers (2)

Anirudha
Anirudha

Reputation: 32787

Regex.Replace(input,@",(?!([^""]*""[^""]*"")*[^""]*$)","");

The above regex would replace , only if their are odd number of " ahead..This is because , within "" would have odd number of " ahead.

[^"]* would match 0 to many characters which are not "

$ depicts the end of string

(?!) is a negative lookahead

Upvotes: 1

Rahul Tripathi
Rahul Tripathi

Reputation: 172378

How about this:-

Regex.Replace(input,@",(?![^""]*""(?:[^""]*""[^""]*"")*[^""]*$)",String.Empty);

Or try this:-

string pattern = @"""[^""]*""";
data = Regex.Replace(data, pattern, m => m.Value.Replace(",", ""),
    RegexOptions.IgnorePatternWhitespace);

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions