been trying the to figure out the escape char for "["and "]" in regex. I have the following pattern of string and this string is the actual string:
[somestring][anotherstring]
So the string will start with "[" followed by somestring and followed by with "]" and followed by "[" and followed by anotherstring and followed by "]".
can anyone please suggest?
If it is only 1 level and you want to parse out the strings, then you do not need RegEx:
string composition = "[somestring][anotherstring]";
string[] stringSeparators = new string[] {"][", "[", "]"};
string[] s = composition.Split(stringSeparators, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
If you want to match for the exact pattern:
Regex r = new Regex(@"^(\[[^\[\]]+\]){2}$");
Edit - to answer with syntax-highlighted code to the commenter: For parsing out the string Regex way using groups, you can use:
foreach (Match match in Regex.Matches(composition, @"\[([^\[\]]+)\]"))
Console.WriteLine(match.Groups[1].Value);
@"(\[[^\]]+\]){2}"
I think (my head hurts a little now).
Note, this will match anything between [ and ].
[s[omest[ring][anotherstring], it will also match successfully, which you may not want.Escape the [ and ] with a '\'.
ie "\[[A-Za-z]*\]\[[A-Za-z]*\]"
http://gskinner.com/RegExr/ This site is awesome for playing around with regexes.
Have Fun!
"\\" or @"\".