Question

What I want to do may seem like a weird scenario. Please keep in mind that I need to do this for a Demo project, where I output c# code to the user to teach them how certain controls are coded.

I am given a .cs file and I need to output the contents. There is at least one class in the file, and at most…a lot. I need to output the whole file, EXCEPT one type of class. The specific type of class that I want to prevent being outputted all inherit a certain base class, so they should be easy to distinguish.

Here is an example:

    public abstract class A{}

    public class B{]

    public class C{}

Assume these are the base-types that some of my classes may inherit. I want to prevent outputting all classes that inherit from A. A is probably going to be the only abstract base class so if that can help in anyway, that would be awesome.

Let’s say I’m given a file, example.cs:

    using System;
    using OtherStuff;

    namespace blah.blahagain.someotherblah
    {
      [AttributeOne]
      [AttributeTwo]
      [AttributeThree]
      public class AA: A
      {
        //stuff
      }

      public class BB: B
      {
        //stuff
      }

      public class CC: C
      {
        //stuff
      }

      public class D
      {
        //stuff
      }

    }

And the output should be

    using System;
    using OtherStuff;

    namespace blah.blahagain.someotherblah
    {
      public class BB: B
      {
        //stuff
      }

      public class CC: C
      {
        //stuff
      }

      public class D
      {
        //stuff
      }

    }

The only way I have thought of is brute-force string manipulation. I can’t, however, use whitespace as a separator between classes because there is no guarantee if there will even be white space between classes. I will need to keep track of open and closed curly brackets to discover where one class begins and another end. I also need to test for the base class of each class by testing the string tokens before the first {} pair.

Also I need to prevent the attributes of AA from outputted too.

Since there are many brighter minds out there, I am here to ask if there is another simpler/cleaner method for doing what I need.

Thanks for reading!

Edit after YetAnotherUser’s answer: The output should be exactly the same as the file, which includes all comments.

Another edit: Instead of answering with certain software or libraries that could do this, I would more prefer algorithms. Maybe regular expressions? I am not good with them so I do not know the extend that they can be used for.

Answer 1

Could you wrap everything you need to exclude with:

#region ExcludeRegion
  [AttributeOne]
  [AttributeTwo]
  [AttributeThree]
  public class AA: A
  {
    //stuff
  }
#endregion

See the #region documentation

This should be relatively easy to scan for and exclude. It also gives you the added benefit of showing what you’re hiding in the IDE.