Question

i have a string that looks like this:

"/dir/location/test-load-ABCD.p"

and i need to parse out “ABCD” (where ABCD will be a different value every day)

The only things that i know that will always be consistent (to use for the logic for parsing) are:

1. There will always be be a “.p” after the value
2. There will always be a “test-load-” before the value.

The things i thought of was somehow grab everything past the last “/” and then remove the last 2 characters (to take case of the “.p” and then to do a

 .Replace("test-load-", "")

but it felt kind of hacky so i wanted to see if people had any suggestions on a more elegant solution.

Answer 1

You can use a regex:

static readonly Regex parser = new Regex(@"/test-load-(.+)\.p");

string part = parser.Match(str).Groups[1].Value;

For added resilience, replace .+ with a character class containing only the characters that can appear in that part.

Bonus:
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DateTime date = DateTime.ParseExact(part, "yyyy-MM-dd", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);