Remove characters using Regex

Question

I have a string. I need to replace all instances of a given array of strings from this original string - how would I do that?

Currently I am using...

var inputString = "this is my original string.";
var replacement = "";
var pattern = string.Join("|", arrayOfStringsToRemove);

Regex.Replace(inputString, pattern, replacement);

This works fine, but unfortunately it breaks down when someone tries to remove a character that has a special meaning in the regex.

How should I do this? Is there a better way?

Answer 1

Build the pattern using Regex.Escape:

StringBuilder pattern = new StringBuilder();
foreach (string s in arrayOfStringsToRemove)
{
    pattern.Append("(");
    pattern.Append(Regex.Escape(s));
    pattern.Append(")|");
}
Regex.Replace(inputString, pattern.ToString(0, pattern.Length - 1), // remove trailing |
    replacement);

Answer 2

Look at Regex.Escape

Answer 3

You need to escape special characters with a backslash

\

Sometimes you may need to use two backslashes

\\

Answer 4

You need to escape characters with spacial meaning of course.

var str_to_replace = "removing \[this\]\(link\)";