Strings and Regular Expressions
- Introduction
- Creating and Using String Objects
- Formatting Strings
- Accessing Individual String Characters
- Analyzing Character Attributes
- Case-Insensitive String Comparison
- Working with Substrings
- Using Verbatim String Syntax
- Choosing Between Constant and Mutable Strings
- Optimizing StringBuilder Performance
- Understanding Basic Regular Expression Syntax
- Validating User Input with Regular Expressions
- Replacing Substrings Using Regular Expressions
- Building a Regular Expression Library
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Chapter 3: Strings and Regular Expressions
3.0. Introduction
It would be very rare to create an entire application without using a single string. Strings help make sense of the seemingly random jumble of binary data that applications use to accomplish a task. They appear in all facets of application development from the smallest system utility to large enterprise services. Their value is so apparent that more and more connected systems are leaning toward string data within their communication protocols by utilizing the Extensible Markup Language (XML) rather than the more cumbersome traditional transmission of large binary data. This book uses strings extensively to examine the internal contents of variables and the results of program flow using Framework Class Libraries (FCL) methods such as Console.WriteLine and MessageBox.Show.
In this chapter, you will learn how to take advantage of the rich support for strings within the .NET Framework and the C# language. Coverage includes ways to manipulate string contents, programmatically inspect strings and their character attributes, and optimize performance when working with string objects. Furthermore, this chapter uncovers the power of regular expressions and how they allow you to effectively parse and manipulate string data. After reading this chapter, you will be able to use regular expressions in a variety of different situations where their value is apparent.