I want to remove some characters from a textbox. It works, but when i try to replace the "[" character it gives a error. Why?
Return Regex.Replace(html, "[", "").Replace(",", " ").Replace("]", "").Replace(Chr(34), " ")
When i delete the "[", "").Replace( part it works great?
Return Regex.Replace(html, ",", " ").Replace("]", "").Replace(Chr(34), " ")
The problem is that since the [ character has a special meaning in regex, It must be escaped in order to use it as part of a regex sequence, therefore to escape it all you have to do is add a \ before the character.
Therefore this would be your proper regex code Return Regex.Replace(html, "\[", "").Replace(",", " ").Replace("]", "").Replace(Chr(34), " ")
Because [ is a reserved character that regex patterns use. You should always escape your search patterns using Regex.Escape(). This will find all reserved characters and escape them with a backslash.
Dim searchPattern = Regex.Escape("[")
Return Regex.Replace(html, searchPattern, ""). 'etc...
But why do you need to use regex anyway? Here's a better way of doing it, I think, using StringBuilder:
Dim sb = New StringBuilder(html) _
.Replace("[", "") _
.Replace(",", " ") _
.Replace("]", "") _
.Replace(Chr(34), " ")
Return sb.ToString()
Return Regex.Replace(html, "\[", "").Replace(",", " ").Replace("]", "").Replace(Chr(34), " ")[has special meaning in a regex it must be escaped with a backslash when literally searching for it.