C# .NET - How can I split string with a tab separator?

Question

I have this string in my code:

string test = @"aaaaa   aaaaa   aaaaa   bbbb    ttttt   tttttt
33333   44444   777777   77777   88888   8888    8888    88888   88888
wwwww   wwwww   wwwwww   wwwww   wwwww   wwwwww";

And here is my code spliting string by new line character and tab.

foreach (var line in test.Split(new string[] { Environment.NewLine }, StringSplitOptions.None))
{
    foreach (var lineItem in line.Split('\t'))
    {                        
    }
}

In first interation of first loop line variable is "aaaaa aaaaa aaaaa bbbb ttttt tttttt" and this is correct, but in seconds loop first interation variable lineItem is the same, it doesn't split this string with tab separator. Why it's happening?

Answer 1

Are you sure your string has tab characters ? try using Split() it will split by tab and white-space:

foreach (var lineItem in line.Split())
{                        
}

Answer 2

The reason it does not work is because the tabs are not tabs in your string test - see this:

The first line is what i generated myself from MS Excel. Use regex to correctly represent any whitespace char (even for Unicode escape sequences)

Regex regex = new Regex(@"\s");
string[] bits = regex.Split(line);