CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#
Kamran
Kamran

Reputation: 4100

C# Remove tab from string, Tabs Identificaton

I want to remove tabs from a string. I am using this code but its not working.

string strWithTabs = "here is a string      with a tab";

// tab-character
char tab = '\u0009';
String line = strWithTabs.Replace(tab.ToString(), "");

I tried this, but still its not working

String line = strWithTabs.Replace("\t", "");

It worked with String line = strWithTabs.Replace(" ", "");

But is their any other way to Identify tabs ?

I also looked at this post Removal of Tab-whitespace? But it removed all the spaces from the string, where as I just want to remove Tabs.

Upvotes: 31

Views: 99230

Answers (4)

NoOneLeft
NoOneLeft

Reputation: 21

Seems to be the compactest ...


//Eliminate tabs & multiple spaces => only 1 space between words
string input1 = " Hello                       World   !";
Regex rgx2 = new Regex("\t|\\s+");
string result = rgx2.Replace(input1, " ");
Console.WriteLine("Original String: {0}", input1);
Console.WriteLine("Replacement String: {0}", result);
Console.ReadKey();

~~~

Upvotes: 2

Morbia
Morbia

Reputation: 4344

Tab and space are not same, if tab is converted into spaces, replacing just "\t" will not work. Below code will find tab and replace with single space and also find multiple spaces and replace it with single space.

string strWithTabs = "here is a string          with a tab and with      spaces";

string line = strWithTabs.Replace("\t", " ");
while(line.IndexOf("  ") >= 0)
{
    line = line.Replace("  ", " ");
}

Edit: Since this is accepted, I'll amend it with the better solution posted by Emilio.NT which is to use Regex instead of while:

string strWithTabs = "here is a string          with a tab and with      spaces";
const string reduceMultiSpace= @"[ ]{2,}";
var line= Regex.Replace(strWithTabs.Replace("\t"," "), reduceMultiSpace, " ");

Upvotes: 40

Emilio.NT
Emilio.NT

Reputation: 101

Use Regular Expression to reduce multiple spaces to one:

var strWithTabs = "here is a string      with a tab    and      spaces";
const string reduceMultiSpace= @"[ ]{2,}";
var line= Regex.Replace(strWithTabs.Replace("\t"," "), reduceMultiSpace, " ");

Upvotes: 9

Soner Gönül
Soner Gönül

Reputation: 98760

Because " " is not equal to tab character. \t is. It is an escape sequence character.

For example;

string strWithTabs = "here is a string\twith a tab";
char tab = '\u0009';
String line = strWithTabs.Replace(tab.ToString(), "");

line will be here is a stringwith a tab

You can't say a sentence like \t is equal to 6 spaces for example.

Upvotes: 31

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