Global replace in Regex

Question

I need to replace all the dots (.) to "[DOT]" available in the html tags and not in the outside of the tags. i.e. attribute value which contains dot (.) should be replace as "[DOT]" but not inner text.

example tag

<link rel="stylesheet" href="27674557W.patent.001_files/27674557W.patent.001.css" type="text/css"/>

changes should be like:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="27674557W[DOT]patent[DOT]001_files/27674557W[DOT]patent[DOT]001[DOT]css" type="text/css"/>

I have tried this patterns in regex.

<(?:[^\.>]*)([\.])(?:[^>]*)>

Replacing code in c# is:

string inputText = <tagText>;
string pattern = @"<([^\.>]*)([\.])([^>]*)>";
inputText = Regex.Replace(inputText, pattern, "$1[DOT]$3", RegexOptions.Singleline);

The above code only replace the first dot in the tab, remaining dots are not changing. I need to change in single shot without using any loop in c#.

Note: Only to replace inside the angle bracket. Not in innertext.

Thanks.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags — Owen Pauling, Dec 22 '17 at 09:43
@HimBromBeere i need to change only dots available inside the angle brackets. Not inner text. — Bala, Dec 22 '17 at 09:44
"i need to change only dots available inside the angle brackets. Not inner text" can you give an example input to illustrate that case? up to now it looks like your input is always between `<` and `/>` — Mong Zhu, Dec 22 '17 at 09:48

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 22 '17 at 09:45

1

You could try using string.Replace().

inputText = inputText.Replace(@".","[DOT]");

answered Dec 22 '17 at 09:45

Jaime Slater

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MakePeaceGreatAgain · Answer 2 · 2017-12-22T09:48:55.480

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why not simply use new Regex("\\.")? Works for me, see fiddle

However It´s a bad idea to parse HTML with regex. In your case you should use an HTML-parser beforehand, and then extract the attribute href. Now you can continue with your regex:

var attribute = htmlparser.GetAttribute("href");
var result = r.Replace(attribute, "[DOT]");

or even simpler as Jaime also answered without a regex at all.

edited Dec 22 '17 at 09:48

answered Dec 22 '17 at 09:46

MakePeaceGreatAgain

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It will replace all dots available in that html content. But i need to change only the dots available inside the angle brackets. – Bala Dec 22 '17 at 09:48

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 22 '17 at 09:48

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You can use this regex to replace . inside the html tags:

(?<=<[^>]+)\.(?=[^>]*>)

answered Dec 22 '17 at 09:48

karthik selvaraj

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did you try this? – karthik selvaraj Dec 22 '17 at 09:51

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 22 '17 at 10:13

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You can use this regex:

<[a-z]+\s.*(\\.)?.*>

the first character set is for the tag name, next is a whitespace then follow any characters then a dot then any other characters

answered Dec 22 '17 at 10:13

Vikramark

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Global replace in Regex

4 Answers4