Removing multiple whitespace, c#

Question

what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to reduce whitespace sizes to 1 characters (removing any unneeded whitespace. How should I deal with the task ?

PS.: NO Regex

EDIT.: Thanks, already succeeded, thanks for the split+join suggestion. Unfortunately, can't upvote any of the responses as frustrated teens have already -repspammed me for asking "a question too simple for the website"

EDIT2.: How do I make sure it doesn't remove a space in the front of the sentence, in case there is one ?

Have you tried anything, or just requested solution here? Doing it with for loop is not a rocket science ... — Kamil Budziewski, Jul 31 '13 at 08:45
split the text based on the text and then join all the strings if the string length is greater than one. — Mr_Green, Jul 31 '13 at 08:48
I've tried going for sentence = sentence.Replace(" ", " "); but that's a terrible idea — user2629770, Jul 31 '13 at 08:50
how about `var res = string.Join(" ", myString.Split(new char []{' '} , StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries));` — Damith, Jul 31 '13 at 08:55
@Damith Will work, but I don't think that creating an array of strings and then rejoin them is very good for performance (expecially with long texts) — Steve, Jul 31 '13 at 09:00

Sayse · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-31T09:03:26.990

5

What about

string.Join(" ", 
   myString.Split(new char[] { ' ' }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries))

Edit

As extension

    public static string RemoveWhiteSpaces(this string s)
    {
        return string.Join(" ", s.Split(new char[] { ' ' }, 
               StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries));
    }
myString.RemoveWhiteSpaces();

edited Jul 31 '13 at 09:03

answered Jul 31 '13 at 08:55

Sayse

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score 4 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:24

An extension for the string class

public static string RemoveExcessSpaces(this string str)
{
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(str.Length);
    bool first = true;
    for (int i = 0; i < str.Length; i++)
    {
        char c = str[i];
        switch (c)
        {
            case '\r':
            case '\n':
            case '\t':
            case ' ':
                if(first)
                {
                    sb.Append(c);
                    first = false;
                }
                else
                    continue;
                break;
            default:
                sb.Append(c);
                first = true;
                break;
        }
    }
    return sb.ToString();
}

Call it with

string result = "This is   a   test whit \t\t\r\n    multiple spaces";
result = result.RemoveExcessSpaces();

Giving credit to the original idea

Of course the set of chars that should be considered whitespaces could be defined passing a list of chars, (or using Char.IsWhiteSpace) but perhaps this could be better for the performance

Dmitry Bychenko · Answer 3 · 2013-07-31T09:12:24.227

You may use this code:

public static String WhiteSpaceReducer(String value) {
  if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(value))
    return value;

  Boolean wasWhiteSpace = false;
  StringBuilder Sb = new StringBuilder();

  foreach (Char Ch in value) 
    if (Char.IsWhiteSpace(Ch)) {
      if (!wasWhiteSpace)
        Sb.Append(Ch);

      wasWhiteSpace = true;
    }
    else {
      wasWhiteSpace = false;
      Sb.Append(Ch);
    }

  return Sb.ToString();
}


...

String test = "   test   me  out  ";
String result = WhiteSpaceReducer(test);

TheProvost · Answer 4 · 2013-07-31T08:54:23.827

0

You do it like this

string myString = "I'm too            lazy for research.";
myString = Regex.Replace(myString, @"\s+", " ");

edited Jul 31 '13 at 08:54

answered Jul 31 '13 at 08:48

TheProvost

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2

`"I'm_too____lazy_for____research."` what about this? – Mr_Green Jul 31 '13 at 08:49
but when in one place is three or more whitespace? ;) – Thaven Jul 31 '13 at 08:49
1

This would remove _all_ spaces, no? – Joachim Isaksson Jul 31 '13 at 08:50
Yup, this removes every single space, which isn't what I'm looking for – user2629770 Jul 31 '13 at 08:52
@TheProvost Should work, but note the "NO Regex" in the question :) – Joachim Isaksson Jul 31 '13 at 08:55

Removing multiple whitespace, c#

4 Answers4