CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#arrays
heroeofTheDesert
heroeofTheDesert

Reputation: 13

Removing empty lines from string array

I'm trying to get a string array with single words from a textfile. However the array is filled with some empty lines. Any Idea how I can make a string array without those empty lines? 

WebClient client = new WebClient();
Stream stream = client.OpenRead("https://gist.githubusercontent.com/Quackmatic/f8deb2b64dd07ea0985d/raw/macbeth.txt");
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(stream);
string[] content = reader.ReadToEnd().Split('?', '!', ' ', '\n', '[', ']', '.');

for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++)
{
    Console.WriteLine(content[i]);
}
Console.ReadLine();

Upvotes: 0

Views: 3486

Answers (2)

Farhad Jabiyev
Farhad Jabiyev

Reputation: 26635

You can try Split() method overload which takes StringSplitOptions as a second parameter with the value RemoveEmptyEntries. Then the return value does not include array elements that contain an empty string.

var result = reader.ReadToEnd()
                   .Split(new[] {'?', '!', ' ', '\n', '[', ']', '.'} , StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

By the way, after this you can call Trim() for all elements, because RemoveEmptyEntries doesn't consider the string " " empty. So you can add this to your code, if you want to discard empty strings:

var result = reader.ReadToEnd()
                   .Split(new[] {'?', '!', ' ', '\n', '[', ']', '.'} , StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries)
                   .Where(x => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(x.Trim())
                   .ToArray();

Upvotes: 6

weston
weston

Reputation: 54781

As you are calling Split, you can do it with the options as detailed in other answer. If you were not however and wanted to remove empty lines from an array using linq:

content = content.Where(s => s != "").ToArray();

Upvotes: 0

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