Question

Can somebody please help me and let me know what am I doing wrong?
I am writing in code behind in C#.
I am trying to find if my multiline textbox value contains HREF or href or <a href or </a> or <A HREF.

This is what I tried with Regex. But it gives me the parsing error saying Too many…
Please help.
Thanks

Regex strMatch = new Regex(@"^(HREF|href|<a href|</a>))", RegexOptions.Compiled | RegexOptions.IgnoreCase | RegexOptions.Multiline);

Answer 1

Your regex is anchored at the start of the string, so it would only match if your string started with one of the four options.

Additionally, you have an extra ) that’s resulting in an invalid regex syntax.

Try this instead:

Regex strMatch = new Regex(@"(?:<a )?href|</a>"
    ,RegexOptions.Compiled|RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

This will match your four cases, since the first two are identical (thanks to IgnoreCase), and the first is a substring of the third.