Question

"key1"="value1 http://www.example.com?a=1";"key2"="value2 http://www.example.com?a=2";

I need to split the above line 2 times, the first time it is the comma character ; and the second time on the = sign.

It doesn’t work correctly because the value part has the = sign in it also.

My code doesn’t work as it was assuming the value part doesnt’ have an = sign in it, and it isn’t using regex simply String.Split(‘=’).

Can someone help with the regex required, I added double quotes around both the key/value to help keep things seperate.

Answer 1

Use the String.Split(char[], int) overload (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/c1bs0eda.aspx). The second parameter will limit the number of substrings to return. If you know your strings will always have at least 1 equal sign (key/value pairs), then set the second parameter to 2.

string x = "key1=value1 http://www.example.com?a=1;key2=value2 http://www.example.com?a=2;";
char[] equal = new char[1] { '=' };
char[] semi = new char[1] { ';' };
string[] list = x.Split(semi, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
foreach (string s in list)
{
    string[] kvp = s.Split(equal, 2);
    Console.WriteLine("Key: {0}, Value: {1}", kvp[0], kvp[1]);
}

–
Result:

Key: key1, Value: value1 http://www.example.com?a=1
Key: key2, Value: value2 http://www.example.com?a=2