Get Substring - everything before certain char

user_93468 0
Viewed 365628

I'm trying to figure out the best way to get everything before the - character in a string. Some example strings are below. The length of the string before - varies and can be any length

223232-1.jpg
443-2.jpg
34443553-5.jpg

so I need the value that's from the start index of 0 to right before -. So the substrings would turn out to be 223232, 443, and 34443553

substring string c#
9 Answers

Slightly modified and refreshed Fredou's solution for C# ≥ 8

/// <summary>
/// Get substring until first occurrence of given character has been found. Returns the whole string if character has not been found.
/// </summary>
public static string GetUntil(this string that, char @char)
{
    return that[..(IndexOf() == -1 ? that.Length : IndexOf())];
    int IndexOf() => that.IndexOf(@char);
}

Tests:

[TestCase("", ' ', ExpectedResult = "")]
[TestCase("a", 'a', ExpectedResult = "")]
[TestCase("a", ' ', ExpectedResult = "a")]
[TestCase(" ", ' ', ExpectedResult = "")]
[TestCase("/", '/', ExpectedResult = "")]
[TestCase("223232-1.jpg", '-', ExpectedResult = "223232")]
[TestCase("443-2.jpg", '-', ExpectedResult = "443")]
[TestCase("34443553-5.jpg", '-', ExpectedResult = "34443553")]
[TestCase("34443553-5-6.jpg", '-', ExpectedResult = "34443553")]
public string GetUntil(string input, char until) => input.GetUntil(until);
user_2978230

The LINQy way

String.Concat( "223232-1.jpg".TakeWhile(c => c != '-') )

(But, you do need to test for null ;)

user_58804840

You can use regular expressions for this purpose, but it's good to avoid extra exceptions when input string mismatches against regular expression.

First to avoid extra headache of escaping to regex pattern - we could just use function for that purpose:

String reStrEnding = Regex.Escape("-");

I know that this does not do anything - as "-" is the same as Regex.Escape("=") == "=", but it will make difference for example if character is @"\".

Then we need to match from begging of the string to string ending, or alternately if ending is not found - then match nothing. (Empty string)

Regex re = new Regex("^(.*?)" + reStrEnding);

If your application is performance critical - then separate line for new Regex, if not - you can have everything in one line.

And finally match against string and extract matched pattern:

String matched = re.Match(str).Groups[1].ToString();

And after that you can either write separate function, like it was done in another answer, or write inline lambda function. I've wrote now using both notations - inline lambda function (does not allow default parameter) or separate function call.

using System;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

static class Helper
{
    public static string GetUntilOrEmpty(this string text, string stopAt = "-")
    {
        return new Regex("^(.*?)" + Regex.Escape(stopAt)).Match(text).Groups[1].Value;
    }
}

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Regex re = new Regex("^(.*?)-");
        Func<String, String> untilSlash = (s) => { return re.Match(s).Groups[1].ToString(); };

        Console.WriteLine(untilSlash("223232-1.jpg"));
        Console.WriteLine(untilSlash("443-2.jpg"));
        Console.WriteLine(untilSlash("34443553-5.jpg"));
        Console.WriteLine(untilSlash("noEnding(will result in empty string)"));
        Console.WriteLine(untilSlash(""));
        // Throws exception: Console.WriteLine(untilSlash(null));

        Console.WriteLine("443-2.jpg".GetUntilOrEmpty());
    }
}

Btw - changing regex pattern to "^(.*?)(-|$)" will allow to pick up either until "-" pattern or if pattern was not found - pick up everything until end of string.

user_23384770
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