Question

I’ve been trying all day with no luck to regex replace the new line "\n" with a "<br />" but outside a code block like a "**[code]**some code...**[/code]**".

For example if I have the following

string myString = "Good luck **\n** thanks [code]my **\n** name[/code]";

How to replace the line breaks "\n" with "<br />" outside the code tag only, using regular expression?

Answer 1

Well, after trying and failing so many times I came up with the following code and it worked, it’s vb.net BTW.

Public Function BBCode(ByVal strTextToReplace As String) As String
        Dim regExp As Regex
        strTextToReplace = strTextToReplace.Replace(Chr(10), "<br />")

        regExp = New Regex("\[code\]([^\]]+)\[\/code\]", RegexOptions.Singleline)
        Dim mc As MatchCollection = regExp.Matches(strTextToReplace)
        For Each m As Match In mc
            Dim gs = m.Groups()
            strTextToReplace = regExp.Replace(strTextToReplace, "<table cellpadding=""2"" cellspacing=""0"" class=""tbl_Quote""><tr><td dir=""rtl""><a class=""quote_Head"">code:</a></td></tr><tr><td><textarea class=""lined"" cols=""77"" readonly=""readonly"" rows=""1"" spellcheck=""false"">" & gs(1).Value.ToString.Replace("<br />", Chr(10)) & "</textarea></td></tr></table>", 1)
        Next
Return strTextToReplace
End Function

I hope this helps someone else.