Text and Data Manipulation with Regular Expressions in .NET Development

Regular expressions(or regex) is a language used for more sophisticated form and text processing. They are often used to perform complex search-and-replace operations, and to validate that text data is well-formed. Today, regular expressions are supported by most programming languages, as well as many scripting languages (like Perl, ASP, Visual Basic, .NET, C#, Java, JSP, PHP,Python, ColdFusion, Tcl, Ruby and many other languages), editors (EmEditor, TextPad), applications (Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, StarOffice, OpenOffice), databases(MySQL, SQL Server), and command-line tools.

Here we see a hands on approach to solve the needs of the majority of RegEx to manipulate data. I have try my best to provide ready to use source for lattest version of ASP.NET, VB.NET, C#.NET. All the example described here are tested with Visual Studio 2008. I have try to cover all important and mostly used regular expressions. If you face with any error or you have new idea which needed to be cover here. Please drop your feedback for me. Ok!, let’s get started…

Getting Started with Regular Expressions basic essentials

• What is Regular Expressions, an Introduction to Regular Expressions
• What is Regular expression engines
• Matching literal (normal) text characters with Regular Expressions
• Matching text with Special meta-characters using Regular Expressions
• Understanding Regular Expressions metacharacters with uses
• Using Regular Expressions Metacharacters – understand escaping
• Using Regular Expressions Metacharacters with .net – Character Representations
• Using Regular Expressions Metacharacters with .net – Matching Specific Character Types
• Using Regular Expressions Metacharacters with .net – POSIX Character Classes
• Using Regular Expressions Metacharacters with .net – Anchors and Other Zero-Width Assertions
• Using Regular Expressions Metacharacters with .net – Lookahead and Lookbehind Zero-Width Assertions
• Using Regular Expressions Metacharacters with .net – Comments and Mode Modifiers
• Using Regular Expressions Metacharacters with .net – Captures
• Using Regular Expressions Metacharacters with .net – Greedy and Lazy quantifier

Regular Expressions development in .net

• Regular Expressions in .net – An Introduction
• System.Text.RegularExpressions Namespace
• .net Regular Expression Classes
  • Capture
  • CaptureCollection
  • Group
  • GroupCollection
  • Match
  • MatchCollection
  • Regex
  • RegexCompilationInfo
  • RegexRunner
  • RegexRunnerFactory

Working with Text using Regular Expressions

• Finding Blank Lines using regular expressions
• Finding Words using regular expressions
• Finding Four to Six letter words using regular expressions
• Finding Four and(or) Six letter words using regular expressions
• Finding Sentence using regular expressions with .net
• Finding each line in the text using regular expressions with .net
• Finding First line in the text using regular expressions with .net
• Finding Last line in the text using regular expressions with .net
• Finding words or String with same beginning and end using regular expressions with .net
• Finding all words starting with "re" using regular expressions with .net
• Finding all words ending with "ing" using regular expressions with .net
• Finding Variations in a Words (like John, Johny, Jon, Jonathan) using regular expressions with .net
• Finding Similar Words (like bat, cat, mat) using regular expressions with .net
• Searching for Lines Beginning with a Word
• Searching for Lines Ending with a Word

Working with form data using Regular Expressions

• Dates
• Validating Dates in MM/DD/YYYY Format
• US Zip Code
• UK Postal Code
• Indian Postal code
• Canadian Postal Code
• Regular Expressions with .net – U.S. Social Security Numbers
• Validate an email address using regular expressions
• Credit card validator

URLs, Paths, HTML, XML using Regular Expressions

• Regular Expressions IP Address Validation with .net
• Finding URL
• Finding Hyperlink
• Finding Text Between HTML Tags
• Finding Finding a HTML, XML Tag
• Finding HTML Comments
• Finding JavaScript comment (//)
• Regular Expressions Hexadecimal RGB color code validation with .net

Miscellaneous text patterns and data manipulation using Regular Expressions

• Scientific Notation
• Search for Matching Parenthesis
• Decimal number
• Regular Expressions Hexadecimal number validation with .net