Question

I have an expression:

((((the&if)|sky)|where)&(end|finish))

What I need is to put a space between symbols and words so that it ends up like:

( ( ( ( the & if ) | sky ) | where ) & ( end | finish ) )

The regex I came up with is (\w)*[(\&*)(\|*)] which only gets me:

( ( ( ( the& if) | sky) | where) & ( end| finish) )

Could I get a little help here from a resident regex guru please? I will be using this in C#.

Answer 1

Edit: Since you’re using C#, try this:

output = Regex.Replace(input, @"([^\w\s]|\w(?!\w))(?!$)", "$1 ");

That inserts a space after any character that matches the following conditions:

• Is neither a letter, number, underscore, or whitespace
  • OR is a word character that is NOT followed by another word character
• AND is not at the end of a line.