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Regex.Matches Method
This page was last reviewed on Mar 9, 2023.
Dot Net Perls
Regex.Matches. This C# method returns multiple Match objects. It matches multiple instances of a pattern and returns a MatchCollection.
Shows a regex
C# method use. Matches() is useful for extracting values, based on a pattern, when many are expected. Often more than just one Match can be found.
Regex.Match
To start, this program uses an input string that contains several words. Each one starts with the letter s. Next, we use Regex.Matches on this string.
Info The pattern here will only match words starting with the letter s, with one or more non-whitespace characters, and ending in a lowercase d.
Note We use foreach on the MatchCollection, and then on the result of the Captures property.
foreach
Note 2 To access the individual pieces matched by the Regex, we need to loop over the Captures collection.
Finally We can access the Value property to get the actual string. The Index property tells us the character position of the capture.
Shows a regex
using System; using System.Text.RegularExpressions; class Program { static void Main() { // Input string. const string value = @"said shed see spear spread super"; // Get a collection of matches. MatchCollection matches = Regex.Matches(value, @"s\w+d"); // Use foreach-loop. foreach (Match match in matches) { foreach (Capture capture in match.Captures) { Console.WriteLine("Index={0}, Value={1}", capture.Index, capture.Value); } } } }
Index=0, Value=said Index=5, Value=shed Index=20, Value=spread
Matches, Match. With Regex.Matches, we gather a group of matches (a MatchCollection) which must be iterated over. If only one Match is needed, Regex.Match is simpler to use.
Summary. The Regex.Matches method provides a way to match multiple times in a single input string. You can then loop over these matches and their individual captures to get all the results.
Final note. Matches() is similar to Regex.Match. Doing this sort of text processing would be more cumbersome if you were to use string class methods.
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Sam Allen is passionate about computer languages. In the past, his work has been recommended by Apple and Microsoft and he has studied computers at a selective university in the United States.
This page was last updated on Mar 9, 2023 (edit).
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