This regex can be used to split the values of a comma delimitted list. List elements may be quoted, unquoted or empty. Commas inside a pair of quotation marks are not matched.
It depends a bit on your exact requirements. I'm assuming: all numbers, any length, numbers cannot have leading zeros nor contain commas or decimal points. individual numbers always separated by a comma then a space, and the last number does NOT have a comma and space after it. Any of these being wrong would simplify the solution.
([1-9][0-9]*,[ ])*[1-9][0-9]*
Here's how I built that mentally:
[0-9] any digit.
[1-9][0-9]* leading non-zero digit followed by any number of digits
[1-9][0-9]*, as above, followed by a comma
[1-9][0-9]*[ ] as above, followed by a space
([1-9][0-9]*[ ])* as above, repeated 0 or more times
([1-9][0-9]*[ ])*[1-9][0-9]* as above, with a final number that doesn't have a comma.
I had a slightly different requirement, to parse an encoded dictionary/hashtable with escaped commas, like this:
"1=This is something, 2=This is something,,with an escaped comma, 3=This is something else"
I think this is an elegant solution, with a trick that avoids a lot of regex complexity:
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(encodedValues))
{
return null;
}
else
{
var retVal = new Dictionary<int, string>();
var reFields = new Regex(@"([0-9]+)\=(([A-Za-z0-9\s]|(,,))+),");
foreach (Match match in reFields.Matches(encodedValues + ","))
{
var id = match.Groups[1].Value;
var value = match.Groups[2].Value;
retVal[int.Parse(id)] = value.Replace(",,", ",");
}
return retVal;
}
I think it can be adapted to the original question with an expression like @"([0-9]+),\s?" and parse on Groups[0].
I hope it's helpful to somebody and thanks for the tips on getting it close to there, especially Asaph!
If you had a more complicated regex, i.e: for valid urls rather than just numbers. You could do the following where you loop through each element and test each of them individually against your regex: