Question

I have an array of strings, each element of the array contains a date and a last name, separated by a single space. For example the array at position 1 contains “12/10/2012 Smith” I simply need the date for each position in the array. Can I do this using Substring()? Or does that not work for arrays?

            for(int i = 0; i < array.Length; i++) {
                if(array[i] == ' ') {
                    array[i].Substring(0, i);
                }
                Console.WriteLine (array[i]);
            }

This doesn’t work. Do I need to somehow look at each of the characters in the array to use Substring()?

Answer 1

If you have an array of strings array[i].Split(' ')[0]; will split an element, and element [0] will be the date portion.

This assumes your data is perfectly formed, as you have specified. You may wish to add checks to prevent index errors.