Question

I need to validate input to my application. The input is a formatted string that may contain parts of a Date, e.g.:

{0:yy}{0:MM}{0:dd}_{0:hh}{0:mm}{0:ss}-SOME OTHER TEXT
sometext{0:yyyy}{0:MM}{0:dd}mORETEXT

The input doesn’t have to contain those parts of a date, but if it does, I need them to be valid format items that can be used by String.Format() method. I believe I should validate using Regular Expressions, but I am not good at it.

Could you please help?

Answer 1

Given our back-and-forth via comments, I think the what you are looking for is:

        Regex curlyThings = new Regex(@"\{0:.*?\}");
        Regex kosherCurlyThings = new Regex(@"\{0:(yy|yyyy|MM|dd|hh|mm|ss)\}");

        MatchCollection matchCollection = curlyThings.Matches("CG{0:yyyy}-{0:MM}-{0:dd}asdf{0:GARBAGE}.csv");
        foreach(Match match in matchCollection)
        {
            if(!kosherCurlyThings.IsMatch(match.Value))
            {
                Console.WriteLine("{0} isn't kosher!", match.Value);
            }                
        }