Need C# Regex for replacing spaces inside of strings

Question

Using C#, I need a some code to use regular expressions to replace spaces inside of quotes with a pipe character (|). problem is that the string could contain multiple quoted expressions and I only want the spaces inside of quotes.

I tried a few things but I am struggling with how to handle the variable number of words that could be inside of quotes, amongst other things.

Here is some examples of what may be input, and the required output:

"word1 word2"
-> "word1|word2"

"word1 word2" word3 "word4 word5"
-> "word1|word2" word3 "word4|word5"

word1 "word2 word3"
-> word1 "word2|word3"

Any help greatly appreciated, and hopefully I will learn about regular expressions.

Does it need to be regex? I think a simple loop would do the trick with more clarity. — Sergey Kalinichenko
– Sergey Kalinichenko, Commented Jun 22, 2012 at 1:26
@dasblinkenlight - Completely agree. Whenever I have to deal with tokenizing quoted strings a loop is always easier to debug and read later. It's only a couple lines of code and will perform better too. — Josh
– Josh, Commented Jun 22, 2012 at 2:37

Guffa · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-22 01:11:30Z

8

Use a regular expresion to find the quotes, and a plain Replace to replace the spaces:

str = Regex.Replace(str, @"""[^""]+""", m => m.Value.Replace(' ', '|'));

answered Jun 22, 2012 at 1:11

Guffa

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8 Comments

Delusional Logic Over a year ago

Aww you beat me to it. Any reason you are using 2 quotes inside the "does not match" statement?

Jon Senchyna Over a year ago

I think you meant to use \". I believe "" is the VB escape sequence for double-quotes.

Cole Tobin Over a year ago

@JonSenchyna no. he used @.

Guffa Over a year ago

@DelusionalLogic: That's how you escape a quotation mark inside a @ delimited string. You can use the string "\"[^\"]+\"" instead.

Delusional Logic Over a year ago

@Guffa I still dont get it, your alternative one looks right to me, but i just dont understand those two in there, i might need to play a but more with c# to get it...

|

gunr2171 · Accepted Answer · 2023-05-02 13:52:31Z

0

/["][^"]+["]/g

Use this pattern to get the strings that are inside of quotes, then do a replace on those returned strings.

edited May 2, 2023 at 13:52

gunr2171

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answered Jun 22, 2012 at 1:17

Delusional Logic

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