How do I skip a character getting between the string?

Question

I am very new to regular expression , I needed to get specific value from string contained between ' '

Using regular expression was able to get the values but getting an exception when there is a third ' in between ' '.

Variable rule contains the whole string

IEnumerable<string> possibleValues = Regex
    .Matches(rule, @"'(?<val>.*?)'")
    .Cast<System.Text.RegularExpressions.Match>()
    .Select(match => match.Groups["val"].Value)
    .ToArray();

When following string is passed

RULE: 'Street Address'
must be 'Samir Complex, 4th Floor, St Andrew's Road, Bandra (West)' (default value)

Expected values was Street Address and Samir Complex, 4th Floor, St Andrew's Road, Bandra (West)

but getting Street Address and Samir Complex, 4th Floor, St Andrew

You have an apostroph `'` in the `Andrew's` and you match as *few* as possible - `.*?`, that's why regex stops on the first apostroph found — Dmitry Bychenko, Mar 25 '19 at 06:54
yes thanks this works can you put it in answer so that i can accept this — Sushant Baweja, Mar 25 '19 at 07:25

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 25 '19 at 07:48

6

When matching apostrophes you don't want to match every one: in your case ' within Andrew's should be skipped. You can try checking for word boundary; see details at Difference between \b and \B in regex

@"'(?<val>.*?)'\B"

Code:

string[] possibleValues = Regex
  .Matches(rule, @"'(?<val>.*?)'\B")
  .Cast<Match>()
  .Select(match => match.Groups["val"].Value)
  .ToArray();

edited Mar 25 '19 at 07:48

Johnny

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answered Mar 25 '19 at 07:33

Dmitry Bychenko

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How do I skip a character getting between the string?

1 Answers1