Question

If I have a string like MCCORMIC 3H R Final 08-26-2011.dwg or even MCCORMIC SMITH 2N L Final 08-26-2011.dwg and I wanted to capture the R in the first string or the L in the second string in a variable, what is the best method for doing so? I was thinking about trying the below statement but it does not work.

string filename = "MCCORMIC 3H R Final 08-26-2011.dwg"
string WhichArea = "";
int WhichIndex = 0;

WhichIndex = filename.IndexOf("Final");
WhichArea = filename.Substring(WhichIndex - 1,1); //Trying to get the R in front of word Final 

Answer 1

Just split by space:

var parts = filename.Split(new [] {' '}, 
                            StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

WhichArea = parts[parts.Length - 3];

It looks like the file names have a very specific format, so this will work just fine.

Even with any number of spaces, using StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries means spaces will not be part of the split result set.

Code updated to deal with both examples – thanks Nikola.