Small problem with replacing characters in a String

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Hi, my goal is it to make wildcard to regex.

I want to escape all regex caracters, except * and ?

this is what i have so far:

C#

str = Regex.Escape(str);
str.Replace(@"\*", @"*");
str.Replace(@"\?", @"?");

when i insert foo*.xml I expect an output of foo*\.xml (escape the puncuration). But instead I get foo\\*\\.xml which didnt escaped the dot, but added 2 escaped backslashes in it

Please help, thanks.

Sincerely:
Jonas

Posted 7-Feb-15 6:12am

User 11197367

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2 solutions

Solution 2

Okay, I just found out that Directory.GetFiles(path, wildcard, searchOption) doesn't take Regex, it takes regular Wildcards.

This whole Regex to Wildcard junk was completely waste of my time xD

but thanks guys.

Posted 16-Feb-15 0:51am

User 11197367

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Thomas Daniels · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-07T06:19:00

Replace does not change the original string, it only returns a new string.

Try this instead:

C#

str = Regex.Escape(str);
str = str.Replace(@"\*", @"*");
str = str.Replace(@"\?", @"?");

You say that you see two backslashes, but there are not really two backslashes. The double backslash is just an escape sequence for the backslash in the string, but the backslash won't be escaped when doing the regex operation.
More about escape sequences: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/h21280bw.aspx[^]
Whether you see two backslashes or not, depends on the way you display the string -- if you view it in the debugger, you'll see two backslashes. If you output the string using Console.WriteLine, you'll only see one.