How do I split a string by a multi-character delim

Question

What if I want to split a string using a delimiter that is a word?

For example, This is a sentence.

I want to split on is and get This and a sentence.

In Java, I can send in a string as a delimiter, but how do I accomplish this in C#?

Answer 1

You can use String.Replace() to replace your desired split string with a character that does not occur in the string and then use String.Split on that character to split the resultant string for the same effect.

Answer 2

string s = "This is a sentence.";
string[] res = s.Split(new string[]{ " is " }, StringSplitOptions.None);

for(int i=0; i<res.length; i++)
    Console.Write(res[i]);

EDIT: The "is" is padded on both sides with spaces in the array in order to preserve the fact that you only want the word "is" removed from the sentence and the word "this" to remain intact.

Answer 3

Here is an extension function to do the split with a string separator:

public static string[] Split(this string value, string seperator)
{
    return value.Split(new string[] { seperator }, StringSplitOptions.None);
}

Example of usage:

string mystring = "one[split on me]two[split on me]three[split on me]four";
var splitStrings = mystring.Split("[split on me]");

Answer 4

You can use the Regex.Split method, something like this:

Regex regex = new Regex(@"\bis\b");
string[] substrings = regex.Split("This is a sentence");

foreach (string match in substrings)
{
   Console.WriteLine("'{0}'", match);
}

Edit: This satisfies the example you gave. Note that an ordinary String.Split will also split on the "is" at the end of the word "This", hence why I used the Regex method and included the word boundaries around the "is". Note, however, that if you just wrote this example in error, then String.Split will probably suffice.

Answer 5

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.string.split.aspx

Example from the docs:

string source = "[stop]ONE[stop][stop]TWO[stop][stop][stop]THREE[stop][stop]";
string[] stringSeparators = new string[] {"[stop]"};
string[] result;

// ...
result = source.Split(stringSeparators, StringSplitOptions.None);

foreach (string s in result)
{
    Console.Write("'{0}' ", String.IsNullOrEmpty(s) ? "<>" : s);
}

Answer 6

Based on existing responses on this post, this simplify the implementation :)

namespace System
{
    public static class BaseTypesExtensions
    {
        /// <summary>
        /// Just a simple wrapper to simplify the process of splitting a string using another string as a separator
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="s"></param>
        /// <param name="pattern"></param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        public static string[] Split(this string s, string separator)
        {
            return s.Split(new string[] { separator }, StringSplitOptions.None);
        }


    }
}