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I'm trying to build a regex that can look for names that contain apostrophes (O'Connor, O'Neil) and replace the apostrophes with 2 apostrophes (O''Connor, O''Neil).

I don't want to do this with all apostrophes in the string in question, just apostrophes that appear between two letters (upper or lower case). Now, I have no trouble finding instances of LETTER-APOSTROPHE-LETTER, but I'm not sure how to take that sequence and change the ' to ''.

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    I have a bad feeling about this... Commented Aug 10, 2012 at 14:59
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    @jnylen - Not very helpful, care to elaborate please?? Commented Aug 10, 2012 at 15:00
  • Are you trying to escape characters for a database query, or something similar? Commented Aug 10, 2012 at 15:01
  • Exactly, mySQL doesn't like single quotes Commented Aug 10, 2012 at 15:03
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    Don't do this - use the native methods for your DB that handle this exact situation, and many more that you haven't thought of. Commented Aug 10, 2012 at 15:04

4 Answers 4

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You said this is for inserting values into a database. Don't do this - use parameterized queries instead, which will handle escaping properly. Jon Skeet says so.

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Thanks! I'll look into this. I'm sure it will help in the future. Unfortunately, right now I don't have direct access to the DB insertion method as they are on the server. I'm processing strings and passing them to a web service. But in the end, yes, they do end up in the DB.
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new Regex("([a-zA-Z])'([a-zA-Z])").Replace(input, match => match.Groups[1] + "''" + match.Groups[2])
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This deletes the O and the C in O'Connor. I end up with ''onnor
Strange, new Regex("([a-zA-Z])'([a-zA-Z])").Replace("O'Connor", match => match.Groups[1] + "''" + match.Groups[2]) returns O''Connor to me..
My mistake, works fine! Just a little slip up on my end. Thank you very much!
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string result = Regex.Replace(input, @"(?<=[^'])(')(?=[^'])", "''");
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I prefer your method. It matches the apostrophe exactly using lookahead and lookbehind constructs, but I think you should replace the [^'] with [a-zA-Z] since it has to be a name, so no numbers or symbols.
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This will work, I just tested it:

Regex.Replace("(\w)'(\w)","$1''$2");

(O'Connor, O'Neil) turns into (O''Connor, O''Neil)

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Parameterized queries are definitely the better route, I'd go with that. This Regex solves your Regex question.

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