Question

I have a string in this format “string1;string2;string3;…;stringn”
; as a delimiter
I need to delete some string value of which I know, say valueForDelete
I use string.Split(‘;’) method to find my value, delete it and then create a new string without deleted value.
I’m wondering is it possible to make this process easy with regex?

Answer 1

var values = "string1;string2;string3;string4";
var cleanedValues = String.Join(";", 
         values.Split(';')
               .Where(x => x != "string3")
               .ToArray())

Regex is a useful tool, and could be used for this, but often hard to maintain. Something like the above would likely provide an easier to maintain solution. Regex can be tricky if your string also contain regex characters. As a bonus, this is easy to extend.

    static string CleanItUp(string values, params string[] removeMe)
    {
        return String.Join(";",
                   values.Split(';')
                         .Except(removeMe)
                         .ToArray());
    }

Used like.

var retString = CleanItUp("string1;string2;string3;", "string1", "string2");
// returns "string3"