CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#.netregexstring
Skrealin
Skrealin

Reputation: 1114

C# how to Regex.Replace "\r\n" (the actual characters, not the line break)

I've got some horrible text that I'm cleaning up using several c# regular expressions. One issue that has me stumped is there are a number of '\r\n' strings in the text, the actual characters not the line breaks.

I've tried:

content = Regex.Replace(content, "\\r\\n", "");

and:

content = Regex.Replace(content, "\r\n", "");

but neither of them work. In the end I had to use:

content = content.Replace("\\r\\n", "\r\n");

to get the project finished, but not being able to do it in a regex annoys me.

Upvotes: 17

Views: 39440

Answers (7)

Manjunath Bilwar
Manjunath Bilwar

Reputation: 2353

A better & simple answer is here. It works for me using Regex.

public static string GetMultilineBreak(this string content)
{
    return Regex.Replace(content, @"\r\n?|\n", "<br>"); 
}

Upvotes: 3

Rohit Hazra
Rohit Hazra

Reputation: 667

The Question is old but there has been a change.

string temp = Regex.Replace(temp, "\\n", " ");

or better enough

string temp = Regex.Replace("tab    d_space  newline\n content here   :P", @"\s+", " ");
//tab d_space newline content here :P

This works on Universal Windows Applications and probably others too.

Upvotes: 0

Robin Maben
Robin Maben

Reputation: 23114

Within a specified input string, Regex.Replacereplaces strings that match a regular expression pattern with a specified replacement string.

A typical usage would be

  string input = "This is   text with   far  too     much   " +  "   whitespace.";
  string pattern = "\\s+";
  string replacement = " ";
  Regex rgx = new Regex(pattern);
  string result = rgx.Replace(input, replacement);

Doesn't seem like that's what you are trying to do.

Upvotes: 2

darioo
darioo

Reputation: 47213

content = Regex.Replace(content, "\\\\r\\\\n", "");

might work. More info here.

Quote:

In literal C# strings, as well as in C++ and many other .NET languages, the backslash is an escape character. The literal string "\\" is a single backslash. In regular expressions, the backslash is also an escape character. The regular expression \\ matches a single backslash. This regular expression as a C# string, becomes "\\\\". That's right: 4 backslashes to match a single one.

Note: I had to write 8 backslashes in the next to last sentence so 4 backslashes would get displayed ;-)

Upvotes: 3

Jens
Jens

Reputation: 25593

\r, and \n have special meaning in Regex, too, so the backslash needs to be escaped. Then, these backslashes needs to be escaped for the c# string, leading to

content = Regex.Replace(content, "\\\\r\\\\n", "");

or

content = Regex.Replace(content, @"\\r\\n", "");

Upvotes: 27

Mark Byers
Mark Byers

Reputation: 839234

It is a good idea to get into the habit of using a verbatim string literals (@"example") when writing regular expressions in C#. In this case you needed this:

content = Regex.Replace(content, @"\\r\\n", "\r\n");

Otherwise you have to escape each backslash twice: once to escape it in the C# string, and then a second time to escape them for the regular expression. So a single backslash would become four backslashes with a standard string literal.

Upvotes: 7

Rick Rat
Rick Rat

Reputation: 1732

Wild guess here:

var bslash = System.IO.Path.DirectorySeparatorChar.ToString();

content = content.Replace(bslash + "r" + bslash + "n", "");

Upvotes: -3

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