Question

I have a value I am pulling into a string that looks like this:

M'arta

I need to have it to translate the numeric value into an actual value so that the string looks like this:

M’arta

Any ideas on how to accomplish this in VB.NET? Here is the relevant line of code that returns this result:

Dim occupant as String = GridView1.Rows(e.RowIndex).Cells(2).Text

Answer 1

Below is the VB (& C#) version to what you’re asking. Basically, use the MatchEvaluator argument in the Regex method to allow custom parsing of the matches. In this case, we find any instances of #<1-3_digit_number> we want to strip the `# symbol, and convert the decimal code.

I added a second conversion in your string (#116) just for testing purposes. You could refactor this in to a custom method and (not sure if VB has it) lambda expression to make it universal, but I’ll leave that up to you.

VB.NET Version (DEMO)

Imports System.Text.RegularExpressions

Public Class Test
        Public Shared Sub Main()
                Dim sample As [String] = "M#39ar#116a"

                Dim reg As New Regex("\x23\d{1,3}")
                Console.WriteLine(reg.Replace(sample, New MatchEvaluator(AddressOf ReplaceASCIICode)))
        End Sub

        Public Shared Function ReplaceASCIICode(m As Match) As [String]
                Dim code As Int32 = Int32.Parse(m.Value.Substring(1))
                Return Convert.ToString(ChrW(code))
        End Function
End Class

C# Version (DEMO)

using System;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

public class Test
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        String sample = "M#39ar#116a";

        Regex reg = new Regex(@"\x23\d{1,3}");
        Console.WriteLine(reg.Replace(sample, new MatchEvaluator(ReplaceASCIICode)));
    }

    public static String ReplaceASCIICode(Match m)
    {
        Int32 code = Int32.Parse(m.Value.Substring(1));
        return Convert.ToString((char)code);
    }
}

---

For archival purposes, here are the versions that support &#___; below:

VB.NET (DEMO)

Imports System.Text.RegularExpressions

Public Class Test
        Public Shared Sub Main()
                Dim sample As [String] = "M'arta"

                Dim reg As New Regex("&#(\d{1,3});")
                Console.WriteLine(reg.Replace(sample, New MatchEvaluator(AddressOf ReplaceASCIICode)))
        End Sub

        Public Shared Function ReplaceASCIICode(m As Match) As [String]
                Dim code As Int32 = Int32.Parse(m.Groups(1).Value)
                Return Convert.ToString(ChrW(code))
        End Function
End Class

C# (DEMO)

using System;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

public class Test
{
        public static void Main()
        {
                String sample = "M'arta";

                Regex reg = new Regex(@"&#(\d{1,3});");
                Console.WriteLine(reg.Replace(sample, new MatchEvaluator(ReplaceASCIICode)));
        }

        public static String ReplaceASCIICode(Match m)
        {
                Int32 code = Int32.Parse(m.Groups[1].Value);
                return Convert.ToString((char)code);
        }
}