RegEx Prob. Beats me!

[Flying-Kiwi]

Hi,

I just started looking at RegEx, and used one of gigemboy's to get started, which was great!

Now though I have a specific prob and I can't seem to work it out. I have a file in this format:

Dim Test As String = "There once was a\nboy named Freddy \nand he\nliked his big fat Teddy\n"
Dim Matches As MatchCollection = Regex.Matches(Test, "((?<!\\n)\s*[A-Za-z]+\s*)+(?=\\n)")

"\n" is a line feed character. I want to pull out all the seperate lines. With the above code I get:

There once was a
nboy named Freddy
nand he
nliked his big fat Teddy

...notice the "n" at the beginning if the 2nd and onward lines.

BTW the above is just a sample sentence for the format.

Thx for your help. RegEx looks like being really cool. Pushing the comfort zone.

[gigemboy]

Try the below Regex sample out. One of the differences was to place each character in its own set of brackets, so it looks for a slash, and then an "n".

Dim Test As String = "There once was a\nboy named Freddy \nand he\nliked his big fat Teddy\n"
 
        'using Regex
        Dim Matches As System.Text.RegularExpressions.MatchCollection = _
            System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Matches(Test, _
            "^.*?(?=[\\][n])|(?<=[\\][n]).*?(?=[\\][n])", System.Text.RegularExpressions.RegexOptions.Singleline)
        For Each Match As System.Text.RegularExpressions.Match In Matches
            MessageBox.Show(Match.Value)
        Next
 
        'using just string.repleace
        Dim FinalString As String = Test.Replace("\n", Environment.NewLine)
        MessageBox.Show(FinalString)

In this case, it might be easier to just use String.Replace, however, learning Regex can be very beneficial in the future if you ever need it...

[wild_bill]

Or use string.split on the \n

[Flying-Kiwi]

Okay, getting there. Thx.

[Krenshau]

This tool has helped me with regex. It is called Expresso.

http://www.ultrapico.com/Expresso.htm