Paste this code into a test:
public int? ParseAnInt(string s)
{
var match = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Match(s, @"\d+");
if (match.Success)
{
int result;
//still use TryParse to handle integer overflow
if (int.TryParse(match.Value, out result))
return result;
}
return null;
}
[TestMethod]
public void TestThis()
{
Assert.AreEqual(15, ParseAnInt("15 person"));
Assert.AreEqual(15, ParseAnInt("person 15"));
Assert.AreEqual(15, ParseAnInt("person15"));
Assert.AreEqual(15, ParseAnInt("15person"));
Assert.IsNull(ParseAnInt("nonumber"));
}
The method returns null is no number is found - it also handles the case where the number causes an integer overflow.
To reduce the chance of an overflow you could instead use long.TryParse
Equally if you anticipate multiple groups of digits, and you want to parse each group as a discreet number you could use Regex.Matches - which will return an enumerable of all the matches in the input string.
15per13so14n, for example?