Replace Multiple String Elements in C#

user_52912 0
Viewed 137815

Is there a better way of doing this... 

MyString.Trim().Replace("&", "and").Replace(",", "").Replace("  ", " ")
         .Replace(" ", "-").Replace("'", "").Replace("/", "").ToLower();

I've extended the string class to keep it down to one job but is there a quicker way?

public static class StringExtension
{
    public static string clean(this string s)
    {
        return s.Replace("&", "and").Replace(",", "").Replace("  ", " ")
                .Replace(" ", "-").Replace("'", "").Replace(".", "")
                .Replace("eacute;", "é").ToLower();
    }
}

Just for fun (and to stop the arguments in the comments) I've shoved a gist up benchmarking the various examples below.

https://gist.github.com/ChrisMcKee/5937656

The regex option scores terribly; the dictionary option comes up the fastest; the long winded version of the stringbuilder replace is slightly faster than the short hand.

refactoring immutability string c#
10 Answers

Another option using linq is

[TestMethod]
public void Test()
{
  var input = "it's worth a lot of money, if you can find a buyer.";
  var expected = "its worth a lot of money if you can find a buyer";
  var removeList = new string[] { ".", ",", "'" };
  var result = input;

  removeList.ToList().ForEach(o => result = result.Replace(o, string.Empty));

  Assert.AreEqual(expected, result);
}
user_87098430

Regular Expression with MatchEvaluator could also be used:

    var pattern = new Regex(@"These|words|are|placed|in|parentheses");
    var input = "The matching words in this text are being placed inside parentheses.";
    var result = pattern.Replace(input , match=> $"({match.Value})");

Note:

  • Obviously different expression (like: \b(\w*test\w*)\b) could be used for words matching.
  • I was hoping it to be more optimized to find the pattern in expression and do the replacements
  • The advantage is the ability to process the matching elements while doing the replacements
user_36214420

This is essentially Paolo Tedesco's answer, but I wanted to make it re-usable.

    public class StringMultipleReplaceHelper
    {
        private readonly Dictionary<string, string> _replacements;

        public StringMultipleReplaceHelper(Dictionary<string, string> replacements)
        {
            _replacements = replacements;
        }

        public string clean(string s)
        {
            foreach (string to_replace in _replacements.Keys)
            {
                s = s.Replace(to_replace, _replacements[to_replace]);
            }
            return s;
        }
    }

One thing to note that I had to stop it being an extension, remove the static modifiers, and remove this from clean(this string s). I'm open to suggestions as to how to implement this better.

user_36038320
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