C# string manipulation

Cantab.

Hi guys,

If anyone could share some tips, I'd be most grateful.

I have a string "command('arg1','arg2','arg3',....,'argn')"

I need to convert this to:

string command="command";
string[] args= {"arg1","arg2","arg3",....."argn"}

I'm trying to use the split functions but they're driving me nuts!

Also, I'm in a C# windows GUI application so I can't write to the console which is making debugging a nightmare! I can't write to a label cos I'm inside a class that doesn't have simple access to the GUI elements.

Aggh. I only rarely have to use C#, but each time I do, I wish I was back in the land of Perl.

Lemming

Cantab. wrote: »

Hi guys,

If anyone could share some tips, I'd be most grateful.

I have a string "command('arg1','arg2','arg3',....,'argn')"

I need to convert this to:

string command="command";
string[] args= {"arg1","arg2","arg3",....."argn"}

I'm trying to use the split functions but they're driving me nuts!

Also, I'm in a C# windows GUI application so I can't write to the console which is making debugging a nightmare! I can't write to a label cos I'm inside a class that doesn't have simple access to the GUI elements.

Aggh. I only rarely have to use C#, but each time I do, I wish I was back in the land of Perl.

I don't understand why you can't debug. What's what a debug session is for. You can insert break-points and inspect (and indeed edit) the values of variables. C# is remarkably easy to debug. A great deal easier to debug than Perl. By a wide, wide country mile.

Regardless (and bear with me this code hasn't been written in VS so apologies for any mistakes): you want to find the index value of the first '(' and get the args substring from there, and then split that into a char[] using the string.split command. There's probably a more elegant way of doing this, but it's late and my brain has gone bye-byes.

String original = "command('args1', 'args2', 'args3')"

String args = original.Substring(original.IndexOf('('));

String argsArray[] = args.Split(',');

The rest should be easy enough to work out around that.

Here's the MSDN description of all the available members (properties/methods/constructors/etc) for the .Net String class: Clicky

[edit. that above link is for .Net framework 3.5 which has added a couple of extra bits and bobs, so be mindful of that. There are framework specific pages linked at the above right of the page]

Cantab.

Hi Lemming,

Thanks for the input.

In the end, the following achieved what I wanted to do:

message="cmd(arg1,arg2)";

string command;
string[] args;

message = message.TrimEnd(new char[] { ')' });
string[] split1 = message.Split(new char[] { '(' });
string[] split2 = split1[1].Split(new char[] { ',' });

command = split1[0];
args = split2;

I guess unfamiliarity with the environment can make a seemingly simple parsing problem infuriating!

I find access to the Microsoft online documentation annoyingly slow. Anyone got any better ideas?

Malice

Cantab. wrote: »

I find access to the Microsoft online documentation annoyingly slow. Anyone got any better ideas?

MSDN is a free download although it's a slightly older version (April 2007) and weighs in at a hefty 2.19Gb for the whole thing.

With regard to your debugging problem, I have the opposite issue, anytime I have to move away from Visual Studio e.g. to PHP or Classic ASP or whatever, I find myself really missing the debugging features of the VS.NET IDE!