Compare two strings ignoring new line characters and white spaces

Question

I need to compare two strings ignoring whitespaces and newline characters, so the following strings should be equal:

"Initial directory structure.\r\n    \r\n    The directory tree has been changed"
"Initial directory structure.\n\nThe directory tree has been changed"

How can I implement it?

Check out the most upvoted answer to [this](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4718965/c-sharp-string-comparison-ignoring-spaces-carriage-return-or-line-breaks) question — Nick, Jul 27 '12 at 13:56
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6859255/how-do-i-make-my-string-compare-not-sensitive-to-ignore-miner-differences-in-w/6859344#6859344 — Artem Vyshniakov, Jul 27 '12 at 13:57
Couldn't you just remove new line and whitespace characters out of both and compare? — davidcollom, Jul 27 '12 at 13:56
I gave an answer to a similar question here: http://stackoverflow.com/a/41408399/24874 — Drew Noakes, Dec 31 '16 at 12:50

jim tollan · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-27T14:11:06.127

15

how about:

string stringOne = "ThE    OlYmpics 2012!";
string stringTwo = "THe\r\n        OlympiCs 2012!";

string fixedStringOne = Regex.Replace(stringOne, @"\s+", String.Empty);
string fixedStringTwo = Regex.Replace(stringTwo, @"\s+", String.Empty);

bool isEqual = String.Equals(fixedStringOne, fixedStringTwo,
                              StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase);

Console.WriteLine(isEqual);
Console.Read();

edited Jul 27 '12 at 14:11

answered Jul 27 '12 at 13:59

jim tollan

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Do newlines count as whitespace? – Tharwen Jul 27 '12 at 14:00

score 10 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 15 '19 at 08:00

10

An alternative approach is to use the CompareOptions of String.Compare.

CompareOptions.IgnoreSymbols

Indicates that the string comparison must ignore symbols, such as white-space characters, punctuation, currency symbols, the percent sign, mathematical symbols, the ampersand, and so on.

String.Compare("foo\r\n   ", "foo", CompareOptions.IgnoreSymbols);

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.globalization.compareoptions

edited Oct 15 '19 at 08:00

Mateusz Kraska

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answered Aug 20 '15 at 15:47

Dan Bailiff

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`CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.CompareInfo.Compare(lhs, rhs, CompareOptions.IgnoreSymbols) ` – bvj Aug 14 '19 at 04:39

Joshua · Answer 3 · 2014-06-10T19:08:27.780

2

copy the string then

xyz.Replace(" ", string.Empty);
xyz.Replace("\n", string.Empty);

edited Jun 10 '14 at 19:08

answered Jul 27 '12 at 13:57

Joshua

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score 1 · Answer 4 · edited Jul 27 '12 at 14:06

1

How about:

string compareA = a.Replace(Environment.NewLine, "").Replace(" ", "");
string compareB = b.Replace(Environment.NewLine, "").Replace(" ", "");

Then you can compare both.

Maybe throw that in to a helper function:

public bool SpacelessCompare(string a, string b){
    string compareA = a.Replace(Environment.NewLine, "").Replace(" ", "");
    string compareB = b.Replace(Environment.NewLine, "").Replace(" ", "");

    return compareA == compareB;
}

edited Jul 27 '12 at 14:06

JohnD

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answered Jul 27 '12 at 13:57

musefan

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Keep in mind when you get rid of spaces these two strings are marked as being the same: `"The red over" "There dover"` – JohnD Jul 27 '12 at 13:58

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 27 '12 at 13:58

0

myString = myString.Replace("", "Initial directory structure.\r\n    \r\n    The directory tree has been changed");

Now just check if they are equal.

String.Compare(myString, "Initial directory structure.The directory tree has been changed")

answered Jul 27 '12 at 13:58

x06265616e

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The first line makes no sense. – Ben Voigt Jun 10 '14 at 19:14

Compare two strings ignoring new line characters and white spaces

5 Answers5