Question

What i’m trying to do is split a string backwards. Meaning right to left.

string startingString = "<span class=\"address\">Hoopeston,, IL 60942</span><br>"

What I would do normally is this.

string[] splitStarting = startingString.Split('>');

so my splitStarting[1] would = "Hoopeston,, IL 60942</span"

then I would do

string[] splitAgain = splitStarting[1].Split('<');

so splitAgain[0] would = "Hoopeston,, IL 60942"

Now this is what I want to do, I want to split by ‘ ‘ (a space) reversed for the last 2 instances of ‘ ‘.

For example my array would come back like so:

[0]="60942"

[1]="IL"

[2] = "Hoopeston,,"

To make this even harder I only ever want the first two reverse splits, so normally I would do something like this

string[] splitCity,Zip = splitAgain[0].Split(new char[] { ' ' }, 3);

but how would you do that backwards? The reason for that is, is because it could be a two name city so an extra ‘ ‘ would break the city name.

Answer 1

Regular expression with named groups to make things so much simpler. No need to reverse strings. Just pluck out what you want.

var pattern = @">(?<city>.*) (?<state>.*) (?<zip>.*?)<";
var expression = new Regex(pattern);
Match m = expression .Match(startingString);
if(m.success){
    Console.WriteLine("Zip: " + m.Groups["zip"].Value);
    Console.WriteLine("State: " + m.Groups["state"].Value);
    Console.WriteLine("City: " + m.Groups["city"].Value);
}

Should give the following results:

 Found 1 match:

   1. >Las Vegas,, IL 60942< has 3 groups:
         1. Las Vegas,, (city)
         2. IL (state)
         3. 60942 (zip)

String literals for use in programs:

C#
    @">(?<city>.*) (?<state>.*) (?<zip>.*?)<"