I am trying to find the number of periods in a string

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I am trying to find the number of periods(.) in a string

I am getting 140 when I should when I should only get 2.
I do not understand the reason why.
I guessing it don't work with special characters but work with letters.

What I have tried:

string period = ".";
               Regex searchFor = new Regex(period);
               int numOfPeriod = searchFor.Matches(SBDuties).Count;
               Response.Write(period +"<br/>");

               Response.Write("Number of full stops " + numOfPeriod +"<br/>");
               Response.Write(SBDuties);

Posted 14-Jun-17 5:03am

Member 9331278

Updated 14-Jun-17 8:17am

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Patrice T · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-14T08:17:00

Quote:
I am trying to find the number of periods(.) in a string

You are using RegEx, it happen that some chars have a special meaning in RegEx, and you are lucky because '.' is a special char that match any char.

Regex is a powerful tool, but like with any tool, you need to learn how to use it.

Just a few interesting links to help building and debugging RegEx.
Here is a link to RegEx documentation:
perlre - perldoc.perl.org[^]
Here is links to tools to help build RegEx and debug them:
.NET Regex Tester - Regex Storm[^]
Expresso Regular Expression Tool[^]
This one show you the RegEx as a nice graph which is really helpful to understand what is doing a RegEx:
Debuggex: Online visual regex tester. JavaScript, Python, and PCRE.[^]

ZurdoDev · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-14T05:11:00

Solution 1

There are other options besides RegEx that perform very well. See c# - How would you count occurrences of a string within a string? - Stack Overflow[^] for several good alternatives.

Posted 14-Jun-17 5:11am

ZurdoDev

Comments

[no name] 14-Jun-17 14:40pm

a 5 for the alternatives

ZurdoDev 14-Jun-17 14:44pm

Thanks.

F-ES Sitecore · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-14T05:16:00

Solution 2

string period = "[.]";

Posted 14-Jun-17 5:16am

F-ES Sitecore

Comments

ZurdoDev 14-Jun-17 14:44pm

A little explanation?

Matt T Heffron 14-Jun-17 18:58pm

Wouldn't
string period = @"\.";
work even more simply?