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Asked: 2026-05-24T01:11:41+00:00

Since Regular Expressions seem to accept only string, the most common way to search

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Since Regular Expressions seem to accept only string, the most common way to search a file is either by reading it to a single string or by reading each line in turn.
The problem is that with big files you either hold a huge string in memory or killing the GC with very large amount of strings that are created, used and left for garbage collection.
Does anyone know of a better way to access this problem?

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  1. Editorial Team

    The ‘best’ way depends on your needs.

    And you won’t ‘kill’ the GC with a large number of strings that quickly. Test/verify your assumptions.

    • When your problem is line-based, read the lines one-by-one. Prefer File.ReadLines() over File.ReadAllLines().

    • If your problem spans the whole file (RegexOptions.Multiline, maybe including line-breaks in the patterns), you will have to read it into 1 string. Use smaller files if it becomes a problem.

    • In all cases, use common sense and/or a profiler.

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