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Regular Expressions Cookbook, 2nd Edition
book

Regular Expressions Cookbook, 2nd Edition

by Jan Goyvaerts, Steven Levithan
August 2012
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
609 pages
19h 16m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Regular Expressions Cookbook, 2nd Edition

3.16. Replace Matches with Replacements Generated in Code

Problem

You want to replace all matches of a regular expression with a new string that you build up in procedural code. You want to be able to replace each match with a different string, based on the text that was actually matched.

For example, suppose you want to replace all numbers in a string with the number multiplied by two.

Solution

C#

You can use the static call when you process only a small number of strings with the same regular expression:

string resultString = Regex.Replace(subjectString, @"\d+",
                      new MatchEvaluator(ComputeReplacement));

Construct a Regex object if you want to use the same regular expression with a large number of strings:

Regex regexObj = new Regex(@"\d+");
string resultString = regexObj.Replace(subjectString,
                      new MatchEvaluator(ComputeReplacement));

Both code snippets call the function ComputeReplacement. You should add this method to the class in which you’re implementing this solution:

public String ComputeReplacement(Match matchResult) {
    int twiceasmuch = int.Parse(matchResult.Value) * 2;
    return twiceasmuch.ToString();
}

VB.NET

You can use the static call when you process only a small number of strings with the same regular expression:

Dim MyMatchEvaluator As New MatchEvaluator(AddressOf ComputeReplacement)
Dim ResultString = Regex.Replace(SubjectString, "\d+", MyMatchEvaluator)

Construct a Regex object if you want to use the same regular expression with a large number of strings:

Dim RegexObj As New Regex("\d+") ...
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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781449327453Supplemental ContentErrata Page