Can I use regular expressions with String.Replace in C#?

Question

For example I have code below string txt="I have strings like West, and West; and west, and Western."

I would like to replace the word west or West with some other word. But I would like not to replace West in Western.

1. Can I use regular expression in string.replace? I used inputText.Replace("(\\sWest.\\s)",temp); It dos not work.

Answer 1

No, but you can use the Regex class.

Code to replace the whole word (rather than part of the word):

string s = "Go west Life is peaceful there";
s = Regex.Replace(s, @"\bwest\b", "something");

Answer 2

Answer to the question is NO - you cannot use regexp in string.Replace.

If you want to use a regular expression, you must use the Regex class, as everyone stated in their answers.

Answer 3

Have you looked at Regex.Replace? Also, be sure to catch the return value; Replace (via any string mechanism) returns a new string - it doesn't do an in-place replace.

Answer 4

Insert the regular expression in the code before class

using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

below is the code for string replace using regex

string input = "Dot > Not Perls";
// Use Regex.Replace to replace the pattern in the input.
string output = Regex.Replace(input, "some string", ">");

source : http://www.dotnetperls.com/regex-replace

Answer 5

Try using the System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex class. It has a static Replace method. I'm not good with regular expressions, but something like

string outputText = Regex.Replace(inputText, "(\\sWest.\\s)", temp);

should work, if your regular expression is correct.

Answer 6

USe this code if you want it to be case insensitive

string pattern = @"\bwest\b";
string modifiedString = Regex.Replace(input, pattern, strReplacement, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

Answer 7

In Java, String#replace accepts strings in regex format but C# can do this as well using extensions:

public static string ReplaceX(this string text, string regex, string replacement) {
    return Regex.Replace(text, regex, replacement);
}

And use it like:

var text = "      space          more spaces  ";
text.Trim().ReplaceX(@"\s+", " "); // "space more spaces"

Answer 8

I agree with Robert Harvey's solution except for one small modification:

s = Regex.Replace(s, @"\bwest\b", "something", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

This will replace both "West" and "west" with your new word