regular expression for spaces and words

Question

have the following text file:

<div>
    <asp:HyperLinkField HeaderText="Hello World of Regular Expression" />
</div>

How do i get what's between the double quotes for any word and spaces?

Updated:

//This one gets me close but doesn't get me strings with spaces in them
var match = Regex.Match(tokens[1], @"HeaderText=\""(\w+)\"""); 
//This was suggested below. It shows correct match count but values are just empty strings
var match = Regex.Match(tokens[1], @"HeaderText=""[^""]+""|[\w]+");

if (match.Success)
{
    yield return new KeyValuePair<string, string>(
        file, match.Groups[1].Value //This is empty for 2nd scenario
    );
}

Don't parse html with Regex: http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/426894 — asawyer, Jan 09 '12 at 14:32
It's not really Html but ASP which will produce Html. He may want to parse it before it's generated. — Patrick Desjardins, Jan 09 '12 at 14:33
@Daok: It makes no difference at all. HTML could also be parsed with an XML parser, which is what "the correct" approach is in these cases. — Jon, Jan 09 '12 at 14:35
@Daok You got it. I am searching for maintenance purposes and not as part of application of sort — Rod, Jan 09 '12 at 14:39
@rod Can you run the regex against the HeaderText property of the field directly in code behind? — asawyer, Jan 09 '12 at 14:41
@Rod Gotcha. You'll want to use a proper Html parsing engine then for sure, not regular expressions. Here's a free easy to use library that should work great for this purpose: http://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/ — asawyer, Jan 09 '12 at 14:54
@Jon It makes a difference as you can see rod answer after yours. Have a nice day. — Patrick Desjardins, Jan 09 '12 at 15:12
sorry all, correction: all i'm doing is collecting all strings related to HeaderText and putting them in a generic collection. See this post for the actual data file: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8779790/save-filename-and-headertext-value-as-key-value-pair-collection -- It's not a html file it just happens to have html syntax — Rod, Jan 09 '12 at 15:15
@rod It would be helpful to include that sort of information upfront. I still think though, that you'll be better off with a proper html parser, using it to grab the HeaderText property text. — asawyer, Jan 09 '12 at 15:32

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 09 '12 at 14:34

2

Try this one:

"[^"]+"|[\w]+

This will return a list of matches, of the individual words AND the entire expression between quotes.

answered Jan 09 '12 at 14:34

Roy Dictus

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how about escaped quotes characters in the string ? – Zonko Jan 09 '12 at 14:54

regular expression for spaces and words

1 Answers1