I need to replace double quotes with single so that something like this
\\\\servername\\dir1\\subdir1\\
becomes
\\servername\dir1\subdir1\
I tried this
string dir = "\\\\servername\\dir1\\subdir1\\";
string s = dir.Replace(@"\\", @"\");
The result I get is
\\servername\\dir1\\subdir1\\
Any ideas?
You don't need to replace anything here. The backslashes are escaped, that's why they are doubled.
Just like \t represents a tabulator, \\ represents a single \. You can see the full list of Escape Sequences on MSDN.
string dir = "\\\\servername\\dir1\\subdir1\\";
Console.WriteLine(dir);
This will output \\servername\dir1\subdir1\.
BTW: You can use the verbatim string to make it more readable:
string dir = @"\\servername\dir1\subdir1\";
There is no problem with the code for replacing. The result that you get is:
\servername\dir1\subdir1\
When you are looking at the result in the debugger, it's shown as it would be written as a literal string, so a backslash characters is shown as two backslash characters.
The string that you create isn't what you think it is. This code:
string dir = "\\\\servername\\dir1\\subdir1\\";
produces a string containing:
\\servername\dir1\subdir1\
The replacement code does replace the \\ at the beginning of the string.
If you want to produce the string \\\\servername\\dir1\\subdir1\\, you use:
string dir = @"\\\\servername\\dir1\\subdir1\\";
or:
string dir = "\\\\\\\\servername\\\\dir1\\\\subdir1\\\\";
This string "\\\\servername\\dir1\\subdir1\\" is the same as @"\\servername\dir1\subdir1\". In order to escape backslashes you need either use @ symbol before string, or use double backslash instead of one.
Why you need that? Because in C# backslash used for escape sequences.
