C sharp regex replace first and last char of any word

Sumair Sheikh

want to remove first and last character of any word by using regex.... FOr example..
(HELLO) (WORLD) will return === HELLO WORLD
and (HE/LLO) (WO/RLD) will return ====== HE/LLO WO/RLD
or //Hello WOrld/ will return ========= Hello WOrld
or (HELLO) (W/ORLD) STACKOVERFLOW) will return === HELLO W/ORLD STACKOVERFLOW
(He(Lo) Wo(R)ld will return ===== He(Lo Wo(R)ld
I dun want to replace all parenthesis ..I wish to replace First and last parenthesis of any word.....
I m trying this ...
temp = Regex.Replace(temp, @"^[!@#$%^&*()_+=[{]};:<>|./?,\'""-]+", " ");
BUT this regex equation ONly remove FIRSt CHaracter IF FOund....

2 Replies

Know the answer? Post it — somebody with the same question will find it here.

Vulpes15y ago
The following removes the first and last parentheses (if any) from a word using regular expressions:

using System;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

class Test
{
static void Main()
{
string[] strings =
{
"(HELLO) (WORLD)",
"(HE/LLO) (WO/RLD)",
"(HELLO) (W/ORLD) STACKOVERFLOW)",
"(He(Lo) Wo(R)ld"
};
string find = @"$?\b(\S+)\b$?";
string replace = "$1";
foreach(string s in strings)
{
string result = Regex.Replace(s, find, replace);
Console.WriteLine(result);
}
Console.ReadKey();
}
}

There was a suggestion in your post that you might want to remove other characters as well but I wasn't clear what they were.
Roy S15y ago
I don't know much about regexes but you could do this without:

for (int i = 1; i < temp.Length - 1; i++)
{
    if (temp[i] == ' ')
    {
        temp = temp.Remove(i - 1, 1).Remove(i, 1);
        i--;
    }
}

temp = temp.Substring(1, temp.Length - 2); //Remove first and last