Question

I’m trying to convert parts of a string into different objects and join those into a list or array it doesn’t matter.
Here’s an example:

Sample string “This is a test string.\n \t This is a new line with a tab”.

And i would like to get an output the one one bellow:

new List<OpenXmlElement>(){
                new Text("This is a test string."),
                new Break(),//this is for the \n char
                new TabChar(), //this is for the \t char
                new Text("This is a new line with a tab")
            };

I already have some the chars and the class types in a dictionary and i plan to instantiate them using reflection.

public static Dictionary<string, Type> Tags = new Dictionary<string, Type>()
    {
              {"\n",   typeof(Break)},
              {"\t",   typeof(TabChar)}
    };

I suppose i can doing using substrings or regex but i was hoping to find a cleaner solution.

Sorry if the question is not clear enough. I’ll be glad to answer any questions you have

This is my full class

public class FormatConverter:IFormatConverter
{

    public static Dictionary<string, Type> Tags = new Dictionary<string, Type>()
    {
              {"\n",   typeof(Break)},
              {"\t",   typeof(TabChar)}
    };

    public IEnumerable<OpenXmlElement> Convert(string format)
    {
        foreach (KeyValuePair<string,Type> pair in Tags)
        {
            var items = format.Split(
                new []{pair.Key},StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries
            );
            foreach (var item in items)
            {
                yield return new Text(item);
                yield return Activator.CreateInstance(pair.Value) as OpenXmlElement;
            }
            format = format.Replace(pair.Key,"");
        }
    }
}

I know what’s wrong with it just don’t know how to fix it.

Answer 1

Here is a solution that parses your sample text. It may not work so well in a real situation:

private readonly static Dictionary<char, Type> Tokens = new Dictionary<char, Type> { 
        { '\n', typeof(Break) },
        { '\t', typeof(TabChar) }
    };

private static IEnumerable<OpenXmlElement> Tokenize(string text)
{
    var start = 0;
    var pos = 0;

    foreach (var c in text)
    {
        Type tokenType;
        if (Tokens.TryGetValue(c, out tokenType))
        {
            if (pos > 0)
            {
                yield return new Text(text.Substring(start, pos));
            }
            yield return (OpenXmlElement)Activator.CreateInstance(tokenType);
            start += pos + 1;
            pos = 0;
        }
        else
        {
            pos++;
        }
    }

    if (pos > 0)
    {
        yield return new Text(text.Substring(start));
    }
}

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    var tokens = Tokenize("This is a test string.\n \t This is a new line with a tab").ToArray();

}