Question

I got a list of strings. And I want to check for every string in there. Sometimes, a string can have the suffix _anim(X) where X is an integer. If such string has that kind of suffix, I need to check for all other strings that have the same “base” (the base being the part without suffix) and finally group such strings and send them to my function.

So, given the next list:

Man_anim(1)

Woman

Man_anim(3)

Man_anim(2)

My code would discover the base Man has a special suffix, and will then generate a new list grouping all Man objects and arrange them depending on the value inside parenthesis. The code is supposed to return

Man_anim(1)

Man_anim(2)

Man_anim(3)

And send such list to my function for further processing.

My problem is, how can I check for the existence of such suffix, and afterwards, check for the value inside parenthesis?

Answer 1

If you know that the suffix is going to be _anim(X) every time (obviously, with X varying) then you can use a regular expression:

Regex.IsMatch(value, @"_anim\(\d+\)$")

If the suffix isn’t at least moderately consistent, then you’ll have to look into data structures, like Suffix Trees, which you can use to determine common structures in strings.