Question

I have something like this in my code.

mystring.Split(new[]{"/","*"}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

however, what I actually want is to separate mystring into two arrays, one holding the separated items above, and the other array to hold the delimiters above in the order they appear in the string.

I could use .IndexOf to continue searching until I extract all of them, but somehow I think this will be redundant. Is there a way to do this in .NET? If possible I want to avoid LINQ.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Something like:

var separators = new char[] { '/', '*' };
var words = new List<string>();
var delimiters = new List<string>();
var idx = source.IndexOfAny(separators);
var prevIdx = 0;
while (idx > -1)
{
    if (idx - prevIdx > 0)
        words.Add(source.Substring(prevIdx, idx - prevIdx));

    prevIdx = idx + 1;
    delimiters.Add(source.Substring(idx, 1));
    idx = source.IndexOfAny(separators, idx + 1);
}