Question

I have a string extension that was defined exactly like this:

public static string GetStringBetween(this string value, string start, string end)
{
    start = Regex.Escape(start);
    end = Regex.Escape(end);

    GroupCollection matches = Regex.Match(value, start + @"([^)]*)" + end).Groups;

    return matches[1].Value;
}

But when I call this:

string str = "The pre-inspection image A. Valderama (1).jpg of client Valderama is not...";
Console.WriteLine(str.GetStringBetween("pre-inspection image ", " of client"));

It doesn’t write anything. But when the str value is like this:

string str = "The pre-inspection image A. Valderama.jpg of client Valderama is not...";

It works fine. Why was it like this?

My code is in C#, framework 4, build in VS2010 Pro.

Please help. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Because you specify to exclude the character ) in the capturing group of your regex: [^)] in @"([^)]*)"

And since ) appears in the first string: Valderama (1).jpg, it will not be able to match.

You probably want @"(.*)" instead.