Question

I need to split a string in C# using a set of delimiter characters. This set should include the default whitespaces (i.e. what you effectively get when you String.Split(null, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries)) plus some additional characters that I specify like ‘.’, ‘,’, ‘;’, etc. So if I have a char array of those additional characters, how to I add all the default whitespaces to it, in order to then feed that expanded array to String.Split? Or is there a better way of splitting using my custom delimiter set + whitespaces? Thx

Answer 1

Just use the appropriate overload of string.Split if you’re at least on .NET 2.0:

char[] separator = new[] { ' ', '.', ',', ';' };
string[] parts = text.Split(separator, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

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I guess i was downvoted because of the incomplete answer. OP has asked for a way to split by all white-spaces(which are 25 on my pc) but also by other delimiters:

public static class StringExtensions
{
    static StringExtensions()
    {
        var whiteSpaceList = new List<char>();
        for (int i = char.MinValue; i <= char.MaxValue; i++)
        {
            char c = Convert.ToChar(i);
            if (char.IsWhiteSpace(c))
            {
                whiteSpaceList.Add(c);
            }
        }
        WhiteSpaces = whiteSpaceList.ToArray();
    }

    public static readonly char[] WhiteSpaces;
    public static string[] SplitWhiteSpacesAndMore(this string str, IEnumerable<char> otherDeleimiters, StringSplitOptions options = StringSplitOptions.None)
    {
        var separatorList = new List<char>(WhiteSpaces);
        separatorList.AddRange(otherDeleimiters);
        return str.Split(separatorList.ToArray(), options);
    }
}

Now you can use this extension method in this way:

string str = "word1 word2\tword3.word4,word5;word6";
char[] separator = { '.', ',', ';' };
string[] split = str.SplitWhiteSpacesAndMore(separator, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);