Question

I have a string. I need to replace all instances of a given array of strings from this original string – how would I do that?

Currently I am using…

var inputString = 'this is my original string.'; var replacement = ''; var pattern = string.Join('|', arrayOfStringsToRemove);  Regex.Replace(inputString, pattern, replacement); 

This works fine, but unfortunately it breaks down when someone tries to remove a character that has a special meaning in the regex.

How should I do this? Is there a better way?

Answer 1

Build the pattern using Regex.Escape:

StringBuilder pattern = new StringBuilder(); foreach (string s in arrayOfStringsToRemove) {     pattern.Append('(');     pattern.Append(Regex.Escape(s));     pattern.Append(')|'); } Regex.Replace(inputString, pattern.ToString(0, pattern.Length - 1), // remove trailing |     replacement);