How can I create an array of anything between and and and using Regex?

Question

I have code that takes this string and parses it into an array of characters:

var textArray = Regex.Replace(text, @"</?span( [^>]*|/)?>",    
String.Empty).Trim().ToCharArray();

<span>そ</span><span>れ</span><span>に</span><span>も</span>拘<span>わ</span><span>ら</span>もも<span>ず</span>

But now I need to do something different and I am not sure how to go about this. What I need is to parse a string like this into an array like this:

そ
れ
に
も
拘
わ
ら
もも
ず

Where anything in between  and  is an element in the array and also anything in between  and .

Would appreciate any advice anyone could offer on how I can use Regex to do this:

Does this answer your question? [RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags) — Obsidian Age, Nov 03 '19 at 21:05
@WiktorStribiżew - When I tried this string: "其れに" it gives me an array with three rows: "其", "れに", "" - Do you have any idea why it could be doing this? Thanks — Alan2, Nov 03 '19 at 21:24
So, what is the problem? Splitting with a match at the end / start of the string always leaves empty items. Add `.Where(s => !string.IsNullOrEmpty(s))` — Wiktor Stribiżew, Nov 03 '19 at 21:29
I added more details and code to the answer. Please check, do not post the questions with the same issue. — Wiktor Stribiżew, Nov 04 '19 at 11:13
Use matching approach. Else, if you have some real HTML, I'd rather go with HtmlAgilityPack — Wiktor Stribiżew, Nov 04 '19 at 11:19

Wiktor Stribiżew · Accepted Answer · 2019-11-04T11:17:50.100

You may use

var textArray = Regex.Split(text, @"(?:</?span(?:\s+[^>]*)?>)+")
    .Where(x => !string.IsNullOrEmpty(x));

The Regex.Split method will split a string into chunks by the matching string occurrences. If the match occurs at the string boundary, empty items are added to the result, hence you need to use the .Where(x => !string.IsNullOrEmpty(x)).

The regex matches 1 or more occurrences of

< - < char
/? - an optional /
span - span text
(?:\s+[^>]*)? - an optional sequence of 1+ whitespaces and then 0 or more chars other than >
> - a > char.

See the regex demo

The non-capturing group ((?:...)) is important as Regex.Split will also add all captured substrings to the result.

Alternatively, if you want to only grab all texts in between span open/close tags:

var textArray = Regex.Matches(text, @"(?s)<span(?:\s+[^>]*)?>(.*?)</span>")
        .Cast<Match>()
        .Select(x => x.Groups[1].Value);

See the C# demo.

Here, <span(?:\s+[^>]*)?> matches span and all the inner part of the tag, and (.*?) captures the inner text and  matches the close tag.

How can I create an array of anything between and and and using Regex?

1 Answers1