Question

I search in a text for some strings and want to remove the first and last char in those strings.

Example :

...
...
OK 125 ab_D9 "can be "this" or; can not be "this" ";
...
OK 673 e_IO1_ "hello; is strong
or maybe not strong";
...

So I use the code to find all strings begin with OK and remove from the 4 groups “…”:

tmp = fin.ReadToEnd();
var matches = Regex.Matches(tmp, "(OK) ([0-9]+) ([A-Za-z_0-9]+) (\"(?:(?!\";).)*\");", RegexOptions.Singleline);
for (int i = 0; i < matches.Count; i++)
    {
         matches[i].Groups[4].Value.Remove(0);

         matches[i].Groups[4].Value.Remove(matches[i].Groups[4].Value.ToString().Length - 1);
         Console.WriteLine(matches[i].Groups[1].Value + "\r\n" + "\r\n" + "\r\n" + matches[i].Groups[2].Value + "\r\n" + "\r\n" + matches[i].Groups[3].Value + "\r\n" + "\r\n" + "\r\n" + matches[i].Groups[4].Value);
         Console.WriteLine("           ");
    }

But it doesn’t remove first and last char from Group 4. What did I do wrong?

My Result should be:

 OK

 125

 ab_D9


 can be "this" or; can not be "this" 


 OK

 673

 e_IO1

 hello; is strong
 or maybe not strong

Answer 1

There is no need to remove things. Just don’t capture the quotes in the first place. So move the parentheses one character inward.

"(OK) ([0-9]+) ([A-Za-z_0-9]+) \"((?:(?!\";).)*)\";"