How can I split a string by some characters and not by a string made of these characters?

Question

How can I split a string by '-' and '>' and not by "->"?

I would like to split the string below:

AAA-BBB->CCC>DDD

and get the result equal to:

{ "AAA", "BBB->CCC", "DDD" }

Not a duplicate. This is splitting by a single character delimiter, except when that character is part of a multi-part string. — jessehouwing, Jan 07 '16 at 21:32

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 07 '16 at 21:20

4

The following example uses a regular expression with lookahead and lookbehind rules to split a string based on '-' or '>' but not '->':

string input = "AAA-BBB->CCC>DDD";
var regex = new Regex("-(?!>)|(?<!-)>");
var split = regex.Split(input);
// split = { "AAA, "BBB->CCC", "DDD" }

answered Jan 07 '16 at 21:20

RogerN

2

I do feel this is slightly easier to read though: `Regex.Split(input, "(?!->)-|>(?<!->)");` It does the same. – jessehouwing Jan 07 '16 at 21:30
Online regex testers may not handle this regex correctly because of the lookbehind rule, which is not supported by Javascript. It will work correctly in C#, though. – RogerN Jan 07 '16 at 21:36

1 Answers1