Get specific part of string with regular expression

Question

I have a string like so "blah blah blah blah @[Dave Battersby](Person:292) blah blibbidy blah"

I want to strip out the unreadable parts so just the text remains using a regular expression. I have tried this regular expression (?<=\[)(.*?)(?=\]) but this just gives a collection of the things inside the [] Ie Dave Battersby

What I need is to return the string "blah blah blah blah Dave Battersby blah blibbidy blah"

Thanks

Have you tried doing a simple replace of the characters that you don't want with an empty string? — d3dave
– d3dave, Commented May 14, 2014 at 15:55

Mark · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-14 15:56:17Z

2

It's not entirely clear if the pattern @[name](id info) is fixed, but if so, the following should work:

Dim input = "blah blah blah blah @[Dave Battersby](Person:292) blah blibbidy blah"
Dim output = Regex.Replace(input, "@\[(.*?)\]\(.*?\)", "$1")

This searches for the full pattern, capturing the name part, and replaces the matched text with just the name.

answered May 14, 2014 at 15:56

Mark

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1 Comment

DavidB Over a year ago

Thanks, the pattern is fixed - with the exception of Person: - this could say other things such as "team", "page"

Dan Bechard · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-14 15:57:47Z

1

Assuming there are no square brackets or parenthesis in your "blah blah blah" text, the following should work:

string myStr = "blah blah blah blah @[Dave Battersby](Person:292) blah blibbidy blah";
Regex.Replace(myStr, @"@\[(.*)\].*\)", "$1");

answered May 14, 2014 at 15:57

Dan Bechard

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