Question

I have an array which contains different blocks of data and i have to extract the blocks which contain the date and the hour. How could i do that?

string[] s={"File", "Block", "Detected:", "2010-08-11", "11:48:50", etc...} 

The date and time are not always on the same position but they do have the same format

Answer 1

Since you know that the date and the time will be at some position inside the array, you can iterate through the array and look for something that looks like a date or a time. Example:

foreach (str in s) {
    if (Regex.IsMatch(str, @"\d\d\d\d-\d\d-\d\d")) {
        // found the date
    }
}

or, using LINQ:

string myDate = (from str in s
                 where Regex.IsMatch(str, @"\d\d\d\d-\d\d-\d\d")
                 select str).First();

For identifying the time, you could use the Regex \d\d:\d\d:\d\d.

(All code untested, since I don’t have Visual Studio available right now.)