Question

I have a text like:

Title A
some description on a few lines, there may be empty lines here
some description on a few lines
Status: some random text
Title B
some description on a few lines, there may be empty lines here
some description on a few lines
Status: some other random text
Title C
some description on a few lines, there may be empty lines here
some description on a few lines
Status: some other random text

I want to parse the text based on the literal Status: and get an array of items, each with title, description lines and status. I’m using C# 4.0.

Answer 1

This is how I would do it (assuming it is read from text file):

Regex regStatus = new Regex(@"^Status:");
Regex regTitle = new Regex(@"^Title:");
string line;
string[] decriptionLine;
string[] statusLine;
string[] titleLine;
using(TextReader reader = File.OpenText("file.txt"))
{
    while(reader.Peek() > 0)
    {
       line = reader.ReadLine();
       if(regStatus.IsMatch(line))
       {
          // status line, convert to array, can drop first element as it is "status"
          statusLine = line.Split(' '); 
          // do stuff with array
       }
       else if(regTitle.IsMatch(line))
       {
          // title line, convert to array can drop first element as it is "title"
          titleLine = line.Split(' ');
          // do stuff with array
       }
       else
       {
          // description line, so just split into array
          decriptionLine = line.Split(' ');
          // do stuff with array
       }
    }
}

You could then take the arrays and store it in some class if you wanted. I will leave that up to you to figure out. It just uses a simple regex to check if the line starts with
“Status:” or “Title:”. Truth be told, that isn’t even needed. You could do something like:

if(line.StartsWith("Status:")) {} 
if(line.StartsWith("Title:")) {}

To check if each line starts with Status or Title.