Question

In c#, there is a line of code such as:

string[] values = Regex.Split(fielddata, @"[;]+");

On what values does this split? I’m getting a bit confused by the mixture of literals from the @ sign and what the square braces and + mean here. Any ideas?

Answer 1

@ is a verbatim string literal, meaning you don’t have to escape special characters. As Asad already said, it splits on one or more consecutive semicolon, where + stands for 1 or more (regex grammar)

Here’s a runnable example: http://ideone.com/whLqUe

        string input = "a;b; ;c;;;d";
        string[] values = Regex.Split(input, @";+");
        foreach (var value in values)
            Console.WriteLine(value);

outputting

a
b

c
d