C# RCon - Replace random amount of spaces?

Question

I currently got a problem with RCon.
I am basically sending a request to receive a list of all players.
The server answers with a list of all players like this:

#     IP:Port      Ping    ID          Name
0     127.0.0.1    0       3523523     Bob
12    192.168.0.1  120     342525523   Anna
320   192.168.0.2  240     63463634634 Chuck Norris
   ^^^           ^^   ^^^^^           ^

The problem is, I do not know how many spaces are between the different tags, it depends on how long the #/IP/ping and ID is.
The spaces can differ from 1 space to 5 spaces.
Also there can be spaces in the name so I can't just split with one space.

I want to read the IP, ping, id and name from the list.
I currently try to do some messy replace & split stuff but it just doesn't work out when the spaces are different.
I thought about doing something with regex but I am not so good with regex.
I already split the lines to cut it down to 1 line.
The class Player can store all the informations

Here is what should happen:

        // List to store all the players
        List<Player> players = new List<Player>();
        // Using a StringReader to split up every line
        StringReader reader = new StringReader(result);

        string line;
        int row = 0;
        // Processing every line one after another
        while ((line = reader.ReadLine()) != null)
        {
            row++;
            // Doing some filtering to prevent empty lines and other stuff
            if (row > 3 && !line.StartsWith("(") && line.Length > 0)
            {
                // Getting all the stuff I need here
                // Then adding a player object to save the informations, ignore status
                players.Add(new Player(ip, ping, id, name, status));
            }
        }

Anyone got an idea that could solve this?

Jon Skeet · Answer 1 · 2012-07-21T22:46:59.693

I want to read the IP, ping, id and name from the list.

I very rarely say this but... this sounds like a job for regular expressions. If you're not good at them at the moment, use this as an opportunity to learn :)

Use a regular expression to match everything, capturing each value in a group, then fetch the groups afterwards.

Sample code:

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

class Test
{
    static void Main()
    {
        var regex = new Regex(@"^(?:\d+)\s+(?<ip>[\d.]+)\s+(?<ping>\d+)\s+(?<id>\d+)\s+(?<name>.*)$");
        var query = File.ReadLines("data.txt")
                        .Skip(1)
                        .Select(line => regex.Match(line))
                        .Select(match => new {
                                    IP = match.Groups["ip"].Value,
                                    Ping = match.Groups["ping"].Value,
                                    Id = match.Groups["id"].Value,
                                    Name = match.Groups["name"].Value
                                });

        foreach (var entry in query)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(entry);
        }
    }
}

Sample output:

{ IP = 127.0.0.1, Ping = 0, Id = 3523523, Name = Bob }
{ IP = 192.168.0.1, Ping = 120, Id = 342525523, Name = Anna }
{ IP = 192.168.0.2, Ping = 240, Id = 63463634634, Name = Chuck Norris }

Obviously you can parse the text for the ping, IP address etc. This was just to get you started. (Also, you should probably check for the success of the match...)

Altough L.B's solution is a lot better for what I want I still thank you for this. I will take a closer look at it once I got time to figure out how it works. — user1137183, Jul 22 '12 at 02:41
@user1137183: Personally I still prefer the regex approach for this - assuming you check for a match success, it's doing a lot more free validation for you. Just a personal preference. — Jon Skeet, Jul 22 '12 at 08:31

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 21 '12 at 23:25

1

Simplest way would be to split your line into 5 parts

var items = line.Split(new char[] {' '}, 5, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
players.Add(new Player(items[1], items[2], items[3], items[4], "status?"));

answered Jul 21 '12 at 23:25

L.B

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C# RCon - Replace random amount of spaces?

2 Answers2