Question

I have been using this regular expression to extract file names out of file path strings:

Regex r = new Regex(@"\w+[.]\w+$+");

This works, as long as there is no space in the file name. For example:

r.Match("c:\somestuff\myfile.doc").Value = "myfile.doc"
r.Match("c:\somestuff\my file.doc").Value = "file.doc"

I need my regular expression to give me “my file.doc”, and not just “file.doc”

I tried messing around with the expression myself. In particular I tried adding \s+ after learning that that is for matching whitespaces. I didn’t get the results I hoped for.

I did devise a solution just to get the job done: I started at the end of the string, went backwards until a backslash was reached. This gave me the file name in reverse order (i.e. cod.elifym) into an array of chars, then I used Array.Reverse() to turn it around. However I’d like to learn how to achieve this by simply modifying my original regular expression.

Answer 1

Regex r = new Regex(@"[\w ]+\.\w+$");