"Craig Kenisston" <CraigKenisston@hotmail.com> wrote in
news:e3JLEDGmEHA.1452@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl:
[color=blue]
>
> Hi,
>
> I need to write a function that should behave like the SQL's
> "like" operator on a list of words.
> I was wondering if I can use Regex directly to do this job. But
> I've been reading about regex and it supports very different
> characters and behaves different.
>
> So, I'm looking for an advise. I'd like to know if it is
> feasable or not, I mean, if dotnet Regex implementation could
> handle it. Or, if anyone can quote a link for a sample or a code
> snippet to start with, it'd be great ![/color]
Craig,
See if this works:
/* Ex:
*
* bool isMatch =
* IsSqlLikeMatch("abcdef", "[az]_%[^qz]ef");
*
* should return true.
*/
private bool IsSqlLikeMatch(string input, string pattern)
{
/* Turn "off" all regular expression related syntax in
* the pattern string. */
pattern = Regex.Escape(pattern);
/* Replace the SQL LIKE wildcard metacharacters with the
* equivalent regular expression metacharacters. */
pattern = pattern.Replace("%", ".*?").Replace("_", ".");
/* The previous call to Regex.Escape actually turned off
* too many metacharacters, i.e. those which are recognized by
* both the regular expression engine and the SQL LIKE
* statement ([...] and [^...]). Those metacharacters have
* to be manually unescaped here. */
pattern = pattern.Replace(@"\[", "[").Replace(@"\]",
"]").Replace(@"\^", "^");
return Regex.IsMatch(input, pattern);
}
--
Hope this helps.
Chris.
-------------
C.R. Timmons Consulting, Inc.
http://www.crtimmonsinc.com/ 
