CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#stringparsing
Only Bolivian Here
Only Bolivian Here

Reputation: 36773

How would you approach this simple string parsing problem?

"\n                                \n                                    Expected:\n                                    \n                                        \n                                            Q4\n                                        \n                                    \n                                    2011\n                                \n                            "

From that string, I need to get the following:

"Expected Q4 2011"

I've tried the following and no dice:

myString.Trim().Replace("\n", "");

I get the following (the massive whitespace is intentional and not a site formatter issue. That is in fact what is returned.)

"Expected:                                                                                                                        Q4                                                                                                                2011"

Upvotes: 2

Views: 126

Answers (4)

Guffa
Guffa

Reputation: 700840

Replace all white space blocks with a single space:

myString = Regex.Replace(myString, @"\s+", " ").Trim();

Upvotes: 10

Quick Joe Smith
Quick Joe Smith

Reputation: 8232

If it is fair to say that you want all non-alphanumeric characters removed (whitespace, punctuation & symbol characters), you can use the following regular expression:

string output = Regex.Replace(@"[\W_]+", myString, " ");

\W is the inverse of \w, which matches all alphanumerics (0-9, a-z, A-Z) and the underscore.

Upvotes: 0

Meligy
Meligy

Reputation: 36624

Try 

var partsSplitByWhitespace = myString.Split(new[] {' ', '\n'}, 
                                                StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
var combinedStringAgain = string.Join(" ", partsSplitByWhitespace);
var result = combinedStringAgain.Trim();

Assuming you are sure the spaces are really space characters.

Upvotes: 0

Kevin Hsu
Kevin Hsu

Reputation: 1756

There are several ways to do this, but here's a short way:

string foo = "\n \n Expected:\n \n \n Q4\n \n \n 2011\n \n ";
string[] foos = foo.Split(new char[] { ' ', '\n' },
                          StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
string bar = string.Join(" ", foos);

Upvotes: 7

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