Regular Expressions Cookbook

3.12. Validate Matches in Procedural Code

Problem

Recipe 3.10 shows how you can retrieve a list of all matches a regular expression can find in a string when it is applied repeatedly to the remainder of the string after each match. Now you want to get a list of matches that meet certain extra criteria that you cannot (easily) express in a regular expression. For example, when retrieving a list of lucky numbers, you only want to retain those that are an integer multiple of 13.

Solution

C#

You can use the static call when you process only a small number of strings with the same regular expression:

StringCollection resultList = new StringCollection();
Match matchResult = Regex.Match(subjectString, @"\d+");
while (matchResult.Success) {
    if (int.Parse(matchResult.Value) % 13 == 0) {
        resultList.Add(matchResult.Value);
    }
    matchResult = matchResult.NextMatch();
}

Construct a Regex object if you want to use the same regular expression with a large number of strings:

StringCollection resultList = new StringCollection();
Regex regexObj = new Regex(@"\d+");
matchResult = regexObj.Match(subjectString);
while (matchResult.Success) {
    if (int.Parse(matchResult.Value) % 13 == 0) {
        resultList.Add(matchResult.Value);
    }
    matchResult = matchResult.NextMatch();
}

VB.NET

You can use the static call when you process only a small number of strings with the same regular expression:

Dim ResultList = New StringCollection Dim MatchResult = Regex.Match(SubjectString, "\d+") While MatchResult.Success If Integer.Parse(MatchResult.Value) ...