Question

Here is the requirement.

I have a string with multiple entries of a particular format. Example below

string SourceString = "<parameter1(value1)><parameter2(value2)><parameter3(value3)>";

I want to get the ouput as below

string[] parameters = {"parameter1","parameter2","parameter3"};   
string[] values = {"value1","value2","value3"};

The above string is just an example with 3 pairs of parameter values. The string may have 40, 52, 75 – any number of entries (less than 100 in one string).
Like this I have multiple strings in an array. I want to do this operation for all the strings in the array.

Could any one please advice how to achieve this? I’m a novice in c#.
Is using regex a better solution or is there any other method?
Any help is much appreciated.

Answer 1

If you didn’t like RegEx’s you could do something like this:

  class Program
  {

    static void Main()
    {

        string input = "<parameter1(value1)>< parameter2(value2)>";
        string[] Items = input.Replace("<", "").Split('>');

        List<string> parameters = new List<string>();
        List<string> values = new List<string>();

        foreach (var item in Items)
        {
            if (item != "")
            {
                KeyValuePair<string, string> kvp = GetInnerItem(item);
                parameters.Add(kvp.Key);
                values.Add(kvp.Value);
            }
        }

        // if you really wanted your results in arrays
        //
        string[] parametersArray = parameters.ToArray();
        string[] valuesArray = values.ToArray();

    }


    public static KeyValuePair<string, string> GetInnerItem(string item)
    {
        //expects parameter1(value1)
        string[] s = item.Replace(")", "").Split('(');
        return new KeyValuePair<string, string>(s[0].Trim(), s[1].Trim());
    }
}

It might be a wee bit quicker than the RegEx method but certainly not as flexible.