Removing unwanted characters from a string

Question

I have a program where I take a date from an RSS file and attempt to convert it into a DateTime . Unfortunately, the RSS file that I have to use has a lot of spacing issues. When I parse the string I get this:

"\t\t\n\t\t4/13/2011\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t"

I want to remove all of the \\t 's and \\n 's. So far these have all failed:

finalDateString.Trim('\t');
finalDateString.Trim('\n');
finalDateString.Trim();
finalDateString.Replace("\t", "");
finalDateString.Replace("\n", "");
finalDateString.Replace(" ", "");

Every one of the commands will return the same string. Any suggestions?

(I tagged RSS in the case that there is an RSS reason for this)

Answer 1

You need to assign the original value the Replace output. You do not need to do the trim either as the replace will get rid of all of them.

finalDateString = finalDateString.Replace("\t", "");
finalDateString = finalDateString.Replace("\n", "");

Answer 2

First, you can remove all the whitespace from your string by using a 1-character regular expression:

    String finalDateTimeString = "\t\t\n\t\t4/13/2011\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t";
    Regex whitespaceRegex = new Regex("\\s");
    finalDateTimeString = whitespaceRegex.Replace(finalDateTimeString, "");

I just tested this, and it worked.

Second, I just tested calling DateTime.Parse() on your string, and it worked without even removing the whitespace. So maybe you don't even have to do that.

    String finalDateTimeString = "\t\t\n\t\t4/13/2011\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t";
    DateTime finalDateTime = DateTime.Parse(finalDateTimeString);
    // finalDateTime.toString() == "4/13/2011 12:00:00 AM"

Answer 3

    private String stringclear(String str)
    {
        String tuslar = "qwertyuopasdfghjklizxcvbnmQWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM._0123456789 :;-+/*@%()[]!\nüÜğĞİışŞçÇöÖ"; // also you can add utf-8 chars
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        for (int i = 0; i < str.Length; i++)
        {
            if (tuslar.Contains(str[i].ToString()))  //from tuslar string. non special chars
                sb.Append(str[i]);
            if (str[i] == (char)13) // special char (enter key)
                sb.Append(str[i]);
        }

        return sb.ToString();
    }

Answer 4

I will use Regular expressions

string strRegex = @"([\s])";    
Regex myRegex = new Regex(strRegex);
string strTargetString = @"  4/13/2011    ";
string strReplace = "";

string result = myRegex.Replace(strTargetString, strReplace);

Answer 5

使用Regex.Replace ：

string result = Regex.Replace(data,"[\\t,\\n]",""));

Answer 6

All the previously posted answers remove all whitespace from the string, but it would be more robust to only remove leading and trailing whitespace.

finalDateTimeString = Regex.Replace(finalDateTimeString, @"^\s+", "");
finalDateTimeString = Regex.Replace(finalDateTimeString, @"\s+$", "");

[ I don't know C#, so I'm guessing at the syntax from the other posts. Corrections welcome. ]