C# Regex remove ampersand

Question

I have the following string: {}&{} and I want to remove ampersand to get {}{}. Here is my Regex.Replace call:

Regex.Replace(@"\{\}&\{\}", @"\}.&\{", "}{")

I have no idea why it doesn't work.

Answer 1

Why complicating? why not just:

myString.Replace("}&{", "}{"); // replaces '}&{' with '}{'

Answer 2

What's the . doing there? That's going to match against any character, and since there is nothing between } and & it will fail to match. Try remove it:

Regex.Replace(@"\{\}&\{\}", @"\}&\{", "}{")

See it on rubular

Or make the character optional with ? :

Regex.Replace(@"\{\}&\{\}", @"\}.?&\{", "}{")

See it on rubular

Answer 3

If you are not sure there is something between the ampersand and the curly bracket, but there could be something, add an asterisk after the period:

Regex.Replace(@"\{\}&\{\}", @"\}.*&\{", "}{")
/*                              ^^ here  */