Regex Class

The System.String class includes several search and comparison methods that you can use to perform pattern matching with text. For example, the String.Contains, String.EndsWith, and String.StartsWith methods determine whether a string instance contains a specified substring; and the String.IndexOf, String.IndexOfAny, String.LastIndexOf, and String.LastIndexOfAny methods return the starting position of a specified substring in a string. Use the methods of the System.String class when you are searching for a specific string. Use the Regex class when you are searching for a specific pattern in a string. For more information and examples, see .NET Framework Regular Expressions.

After you define a regular expression pattern, you can provide it to the regular expression engine in either of two ways.

• By instantiating a Regex object that represents the regular expression. To do this, you pass the regular expression pattern to a Regex constructor. A Regex object is immutable; when you instantiate a Regex object with a regular expression, that object's regular expression cannot be changed.

• By supplying both the regular expression and the text to search to a static (Shared in Visual Basic) Regex method. This enables you to use a regular expression without explicitly creating a Regex object.

All Regex pattern identification methods include both static and instance overloads.

The regular expression engine must compile a particular pattern before the pattern can be used. Because Regex objects are immutable, this is a one-time procedure that occurs when a Regex class constructor or a static method is called. To eliminate the need to repeatedly compile a single regular expression, the regular expression engine caches the compiled regular expressions used in static method calls. As a result, regular expression pattern-matching methods offer comparable performance for static and instance methods.

Important
In the .NET Framework versions 1.0 and 1.1, all compiled regular expressions, whether they were used in instance or static method calls, were cached. Starting with the .NET Framework 2.0, only regular expressions used in static method calls are cached.

However, the system of caching implemented by the regular expression engine can adversely affect performance in the following two cases:

• When you use static method calls with a large number of regular expressions. By default, the regular expression engine caches the 15 most recently used static regular expressions. If your application uses more than 15 static regular expressions, some regular expressions must be recompiled. To prevent this recompilation, you can increase the Regex.CacheSize property to an appropriate value.

• When your application instantiates new Regex objects with regular expressions that have previously been compiled. For example, the following code defines a regular expression to locate duplicated words in individual lines of a text stream. Although the example uses a single regular expression, it instantiates a new Regex object to process each line of text. This results in the recompilation of the regular expression with each iteration of the loop.

  C#

  VB

  Copy

  
  StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(filename);
  string input;
  string pattern = @"\b(\w+)\s\1\b";
  while (sr.Peek() >= 0)
  {
     input = sr.ReadLine();
     Regex rgx = new Regex(pattern, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
     MatchCollection matches = rgx.Matches(input);
     if (matches.Count > 0)
     {
        Console.WriteLine("{0} ({1} matches):", input, matches.Count);
        foreach (Match match in matches)
           Console.WriteLine("   " + match.Value);
     }
  }
  sr.Close();   
  
  
  

  To prevent recompilation, the application should instantiate a single Regex object that is accessible to all code that requires it, as shown in the following rewritten example.

  C#

  VB

  Copy

  
  StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(filename);
  string input;
  string pattern = @"\b(\w+)\s\1\b";
  Regex rgx = new Regex(pattern, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
  
  while (sr.Peek() >= 0)
  {
     input = sr.ReadLine();
     MatchCollection matches = rgx.Matches(input);
     if (matches.Count > 0)
     {
        Console.WriteLine("{0} ({1} matches):", input, matches.Count);
        foreach (Match match in matches)
           Console.WriteLine("   " + match.Value);
     }
  }
  sr.Close();   
  
  
  

Whether you decide to instantiate a Regex object and call its methods or call static methods, the Regex class offers the following pattern-matching functionality:

• Validation of a match. You call the IsMatch method to determine whether a match is present.

• Retrieval of a single match. You call the Match method to retrieve a Match object that represents the first match in a string or in part of a string. Subsequent matches can be retrieved by calling the Match.NextMatch method.

• Retrieval of all matches. You call the Matches method to retrieve a System.Text.RegularExpressions.MatchCollection object that represents all the matches found in a string or in part of a string.

• Replacement of matched text. You call the Replace method to replace matched text. The replacement text can also be defined by a regular expression. In addition, some of the Replace methods include a MatchEvaluator parameter that enables you to programmatically define the replacement text.

• Creation of a string array that is formed from parts of an input string. You call the Split method to split an input string at positions that are defined by the regular expression.

In addition to its pattern-matching methods, the Regex class includes several special-purpose methods:

• The Escape method escapes any characters that may be interpreted as regular expression operators in a regular expression or input string.

• The Unescape method removes these escape characters.

• The CompileToAssembly method creates an assembly that contains predefined regular expressions. The .NET Framework contains examples of these special-purpose assemblies in the System.Web.RegularExpressions namespace.