C# Regex Split - everything inside square brackets

Question

I'm currently trying to split a string in C# (latest .NET and Visual Studio 2008), in order to retrieve everything that's inside square brackets and discard the remaining text.

Eg: "H1-receptor antagonist [HSA:3269] [PATH:hsa04080(3269)]"

In this case, I'm interested in getting " HSA:3269 " and " PATH:hsa04080(3269) " into an array of strings.

How can this be achieved?

Answer 1

Split won't help you here; you need to use regular expressions:

// using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
// pattern = any number of arbitrary characters between square brackets.
var pattern = @"\[(.*?)\]";
var query = "H1-receptor antagonist [HSA:3269] [PATH:hsa04080(3269)]";
var matches = Regex.Matches(query, pattern);

foreach (Match m in matches) {
    Console.WriteLine(m.Groups[1]);
}

Yields your results.

Answer 2

Try this

string mystr = "Hello my name is  {robert} and i live in  {florida}";

List<string> myvariables = new List<string>();
while (mystr.Contains("{"))
{
    myvariable.Add(mystr.Split('{', '}')[1]);
    mystr = mystr.Replace("{" + mystr.Split('{', '}')[1] + "}", "");
};

This way I will have an array which will contain robert and florida.