Question

I need a way to have this:

"test, and test but not testing.  But yes to test".Replace("test", "text")

return this:

"text, and text but not testing.  But yes to text"

Basically I want to replace whole words, but not partial matches.

NOTE: I am going to have to use VB for this (SSRS 2008 code), but C# is my normal language, so responses in either are fine.

Answer 1

A regex is the easiest approach:

string input = "test, and test but not testing.  But yes to test";
string pattern = @"\btest\b";
string replace = "text";
string result = Regex.Replace(input, pattern, replace);
Console.WriteLine(result);

The important part of the pattern is the \b metacharacter, which matches on word boundaries. If you need it to be case-insensitive use RegexOptions.IgnoreCase:

Regex.Replace(input, pattern, replace, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);