Question

I have a string which varies everytime it is input as it is a search query, an example of this may be Z00044XLE1311, however I wish to do that the same product can be returned if the customer removes all the 0’s (there is always zeros after the first few letters) however I don’t seem to be able to do this, I want to essentially search for Z*44XLE1311 instead.

I would prefer to do this using Regex as this is how my current search feature is done. I am aware that I should use substitution but I am unsure how to use this properly for this problem.

My current code is,

                if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(base.RemoveCharacters))
                {
                    var regex = new Regex(string.Format("[{0}]+", base.RemoveCharacters));
                    text = regex.Replace(text, string.Empty);
                }

                if (Regex.IsMatch(text, "^[a-z]+00+", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase))
                {
                    text = new Regex("0{1,}", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase).Replace(text, "00*", 1);
                }
                else
                {
                    if (Regex.IsMatch(text, "^[a-z]+", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase))
                    {
                        text = new Regex("[A-Z]{1,}", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase).Replace(text, "[A-Z]*", 1);
                    }
                    URL = WebUtilities.AddToQueryString(URL, box.Key, Page.Server.UrlEncode(text));
            }
        }

Answer 1

I actually have this now working, I have used:

                text = Regex.Replace(text, "^([a-z]+)0*([1-9][0-9]*)", @"$1 0\* $2", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);