Question

Is there an easy way to match all punctuation except period and underscore, in a C# regex? Hoping to do it without enumerating every single punctuation mark.

Answer 1

Use Regex Subtraction

[\p{P}-[._]]

See the .NET Regex documentation. I’m not sure if other flavors support it.

C# example

string pattern = @"[\p{P}\p{S}-[._]]"; // added \p{S} to get ^,~ and ` (among others)
string test = @"_""'a:;%^&*~`bc!@#.,?";
MatchCollection mx = Regex.Matches(test, pattern);
foreach (Match m in mx)
{
    Console.WriteLine("{0}: {1} {2}", m.Value, m.Index, m.Length);
}

Explanation

The pattern is a Character Class Subtraction. It starts with a standard character class like [\p{P}] and then adds a Subtraction Character Class like -[._], which says to remove the . and _. The subtraction is placed inside the [ ] after the standard class guts.