c# using regex to parse string between quotes

Question

I'm fairly new and I couldn't get this to work properly.

I have this string

["string1","string2","string3","string4","string5","string6","string7","string8","string9","string10"]

And I want to get all values between the "

I think regex would be best to do the task.

Thanks for your help.

possible duplicates http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2402797/regex-find-characters-between http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3697644/regex-match-text-in-between-delimiters — hometoast, Aug 10 '12 at 13:29
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Whatever it is, it's not a string. — 2v0mjdrl, Aug 10 '12 at 13:30
Who knows? It could an array of strings. @Simon Whitehead has taken a punt in his answer on it being a single string that is missing the enlosing quotes, and missing \" for the embedded quotes. — Polyfun, Aug 10 '12 at 13:34
Maybe you can use JavaScriptSerializer http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.script.serialization.javascriptserializer.deserializeobject — Matthew, Aug 10 '12 at 13:44

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 10 '12 at 13:24

5

This will capture between the quotes:

(?<=")[\w]+(?!=")

An expanded example:

string s = "[\"string1\",\"string2\",\"string3\",\"string4\",\"string5\",\"string6\",\"string7\",\"string8\",\"string9\",\"string10\"]";

foreach (Match m in Regex.Matches(s, "(?<=\")[\\w]+(?!=\")")) {
    Console.WriteLine(m.Value);
}

answered Aug 10 '12 at 13:24

Simon Whitehead

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OP, this is a better answer than the spliting version. – Ryan Copley Aug 10 '12 at 13:44
@RyanCopley could you explain why you think it's better than splitting the string? IMO using a regex for simple string manipulation like this is overkill. It's also more effecient to use a split than it is to use a regex... – James Aug 10 '12 at 13:48
1

Efficiency is debatable for a single use scenario.. but then we are speculating :) I hope it helped in some way anyway :) – Simon Whitehead Aug 10 '12 at 14:11
1

@SimonWhitehead True, however, a regex should be used for *matching* data, not parsing. – James Aug 10 '12 at 14:17
1

Could you please improve it so it also works with spaces within the quotes? – maddo7 Aug 10 '12 at 21:33
Just add \\s after \\w in the regex – Simon Whitehead Aug 11 '12 at 00:23

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 10 '12 at 13:52

Since this looks like JSON, try using the JavaScriptSerializer class

string myString = "[\"string1\",\"string2\",\"string3\",\"string4\",\"string5\",\"string6\",\"string7\",\"string8\",\"string9\",\"string10\"]";

string[] strings = (new JavaScriptSerializer()).Deserialize<string[]>(myString);

foreach (string str in strings)
{
    Console.WriteLine(str);
}

Kinda seems overkill though.

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 10 '12 at 13:36

In my opinion, this is a job for Split rather than just Regex:

string str = "[\"string1\",\"string2\",\"string3\",\"string4\",\"string5\",\"string6\",\"string7\",\"string8\",\"string9\",\"string10\"]";
Regex rgx = new Regex("[\\[\\]\"]"); // get rid of the quotes and braces
str = rgx.Replace(str,""); 
string [] split = str.Split(','); // split on commas. that's it.

foreach (string s in split)
{
    Console.WriteLine(s);
}

This requires no special matching regex that you may to change if your quoted strings get messy. Consequently, it is (again, in my opinion) more elegant.

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 10 '12 at 13:41

0

If you mean you have a CSV string e.g.

"\"string1\", \"string2\", \"string3\""

Then you don't need a regex for something as trivial as this, you could use String.Split with a sprinkle of LINQ:

var values = csvString.Split(',').Select(s => s.Replace("\"", "").Trim());

answered Aug 10 '12 at 13:41

James

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you won't be able to do this if the quoted string contains a comma. – alltej Jun 20 '17 at 19:33
@alltej I didn't say it was a universal solution, it was one that would work for the given sample data :) – James Jun 22 '17 at 08:51

c# using regex to parse string between quotes

4 Answers4