Regex: Not capturing '+' character

[sklett]

I have this pattern: @"\s*//\$\$\s*Targets:\s*([\s,\w]+)"

to match this line: //$$Targets: thing, thing+

When I get a match, the first Group (index 1, not 0) has: "thing, thing" -
it drops the plus ('+'). Now, I don't know the plus will be there,
everything after "Targets:" is variable and will change so I can't simply
add an explicit check for it.

What trick is there to get the special characters returned in the groups?

Thanks for reading,
Steve

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

sklett <sk****@mddirect.com> wrote:

I have this pattern: @"\s*//\$\$\s*Targets:\s*([\s,\w]+)"

to match this line: //$$Targets: thing, thing+

When I get a match, the first Group (index 1, not 0) has: "thing, thing" -
it drops the plus ('+'). Now, I don't know the plus will be there,
everything after "Targets:" is variable and will change so I can't simply
add an explicit check for it.

What trick is there to get the special characters returned in the groups?

Well, you've currently said you want to match whitespace characters,
commas, and word characters. Any extra characters you want to capture
need to be in the [...] part. So, to get + as well, you'd need:

[\s,\w\+]

To you just want to match to the end of the line though? If so, just
use (.+) instead of ([\s,\w]+).

(You might want to use the $ "end-of-string" assertion, depending on
what other options you have, such as multi-line.)

--
Jon Skeet - <sk***@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too

[sklett]

"Jon Skeet [C# MVP]" <sk***@pobox.com> wrote in message
news:MP************************@msnews.microsoft.c om...

sklett <sk****@mddirect.com> wrote:

I have this pattern: @"\s*//\$\$\s*Targets:\s*([\s,\w]+)"

to match this line: //$$Targets: thing, thing+

When I get a match, the first Group (index 1, not 0) has: "thing,
thing" -
it drops the plus ('+'). Now, I don't know the plus will be there,
everything after "Targets:" is variable and will change so I can't simply
add an explicit check for it.

What trick is there to get the special characters returned in the groups?
Well, you've currently said you want to match whitespace characters,
commas, and word characters. Any extra characters you want to capture
need to be in the [...] part. So, to get + as well, you'd need:

[\s,\w\+]

To you just want to match to the end of the line though? If so, just
use (.+) instead of ([\s,\w]+).

(You might want to use the $ "end-of-string" assertion, depending on
what other options you have, such as multi-line.)

Jon, perfect, thank you! Regex is sooo much faster than string comparison
parsing, I can't believe it.

--
Jon Skeet - <sk***@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

sklett <sk****@mddirect.com> wrote:

Well, you've currently said you want to match whitespace characters,
commas, and word characters. Any extra characters you want to capture
need to be in the [...] part. So, to get + as well, you'd need:

[\s,\w\+]

To you just want to match to the end of the line though? If so, just
use (.+) instead of ([\s,\w]+).

(You might want to use the $ "end-of-string" assertion, depending on
what other options you have, such as multi-line.)

Jon, perfect, thank you! Regex is sooo much faster than string comparison
parsing, I can't believe it.

Well, there are times that it's faster, and there are plenty of times
that it's slower. For instance, if a matching string is always just
//$$Targets: (stuff)
and you want to get (stuff) - all the way to the end of the string -
then using IndexOf and Substring would be simpler and almost certainly
faster.

--
Jon Skeet - <sk***@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too