removing all special characters from string c#

Question

I am searching for solution for some time that removes all special charachers is replace with "-".

Currently I am using replace() method.

for example like this to remove tab from string

str.Replace("\t","-");

Special characters:!@#$%^&*()}{|":?><[]\\;'/.,~ and the rest

All I want is English alphabets, numbers[0-9], and "-"

Answer 1

You can use Regex.Replace method for it.

Pattern for "other than numbers,alphabet" could look like [^\\w\\d] where \\w stands for any word character, \\d for any digit, ^ is negation and [] is character group.

See Regex language description for reference.

Answer 2

Using regular expressions

The following example searches for the mentioned characters and replaces them with -

var pattern = new Regex("[:!@#$%^&*()}{|\":?><\[\]\\;'/.,~]");
pattern.Replace(myString, "-");

Using linq aggregate

char[] charsToReplace = new char[] { ':', '!', '@', '#', ... };
string replacedString = charsToReplace.Aggregate(stringToReplace, (ch1, ch2) => ch1.Replace(ch2, '-'));

Answer 3

LINQ version, if string is in UTF-8 (by default it is):

var newChars = myString.Select(ch => 
                             ((ch >= 'a' && ch <= 'z') 
                                  || (ch >= 'A' && ch <= 'Z') 
                                  || (ch >= '0' && ch <= '9') 
                                  || ch == '-') ? ch : '-')
                       .ToArray();

return new string(newChars);

Answer 4

 $(function () {

    $("#Username").bind('paste', function () {
        setTimeout(function () {
            //get the value of the input text
            var data = $('#Username').val();
            //replace the special characters to ''
            var dataFull = data.replace(/[^\w\s]/gi, '');
            //set the new value of the input text without special characters
            $('#Username').val(dataFull);
        });

    });
});

Answer 5

Removes everything except letters, numbers and replaces with "-"

string mystring = "abcdef@_#124"
mystring = Regex.Replace(mystring, "[^\\w\\.]", "-");