Regex.Matches Method (String)

The Matches(String) method is similar to the Match(String) method, except that it returns information about all the matches found in the input string, instead of a single match. It is equivalent to the following code:

Match match = regex.Match(input);
while (match.Success) {
      // Handle match here...

      match = match.NextMatch();
}  

The collection includes only matches and terminates at the first non-match.

The regular expression pattern for which the Matches(String) method searches is defined by the call to one of the Regex class constructors. For more information about the elements that can form a regular expression pattern, see Regular Expression Language - Quick Reference.

The Matches method uses lazy evaluation to populate the returned MatchCollection object. Accessing members of this collection such as MatchCollection.Count and MatchCollection.CopyTo causes the collection to be populated immediately. To take advantage of lazy evaluation, you should iterate the collection by using a construct such as foreach in C# and For Each…Next in Visual Basic.

Because of its lazy evaluation, calling the Matches(String) method does not throw a RegexMatchTimeoutException exception. However, the exception is thrown when an operation is performed on the MatchCollection object returned by this method, if the MatchTimeout property is not Regex.InfiniteMatchTimeout and a matching operation exceeds the time-out interval.

The following example uses the Matches(String) method to identify any words in a sentence that end in "es".

using System;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

public class Example
{
   public static void Main()
   {
      string pattern = @"\b\w+es\b";
      Regex rgx = new Regex(pattern);
      string sentence = "Who writes these notes?";

      foreach (Match match in rgx.Matches(sentence))
         Console.WriteLine("Found '{0}' at position {1}", 
                           match.Value, match.Index);
   }
}
// The example displays the following output: 
//       Found 'writes' at position 4 
//       Found 'notes' at position 17

The regular expression pattern \b\w+es\b is defined as shown in the following table.

.NET Framework

.NET Framework Client Profile

Portable Class Library

.NET for Windows Store apps

Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Windows 7, Windows Vista SP2, Windows Server 2008 (Server Core Role not supported), Windows Server 2008 R2 (Server Core Role supported with SP1 or later; Itanium not supported)

The .NET Framework does not support all versions of every platform. For a list of the supported versions, see .NET Framework System Requirements.

Reference

Other Resources