Szathmáry László honlapja @ DEIK

string.Split

In Python:

>>> s = "this is a test "
>>> s.split()
['this', 'is', 'a', 'test']
>>>

In C#:

csharp> var s = "this is a test "
csharp> s.Split()
{ "this", "is", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "a", "test", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "" }

Hmm, not exactly what we expected… But here is the remedy:

csharp> var s = "this is a test "
csharp> s.Split(new char[0], StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
{ "this", "is", "a", "test" }

Now let's make a custom extension of it:

// split by whitespaces and remove empty entries (like Python's s.split())
public static string[] SplitAndRemoveEmptyEntries(this string s)
{
return s.Split(new char[0], StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
}

Some tests:

const string s4 = " aa bb \t cc dd\n ";
Assert.Equal(new[] {"aa", "bb", "cc", "dd"}, s4.SplitAndRemoveEmptyEntries());

See the current version here.

Update (20221203):

You can also use regular expressions:

csharp> using System.Text.RegularExpressions
csharp> string s = " aa bb \t cc dd\n "
csharp> Regex.Split(s, "\\s+")
{ "", "aa", "bb", "cc", "dd", "" }

Notice the empty strings at the beginning and at the end! Here is how to get rid of them:

csharp> using System.Text.RegularExpressions
csharp> string s = " aa bb \t cc dd\n "
csharp> Regex.Split(s.Trim(), "\\s+")
{ "aa", "bb", "cc", "dd" }

First trim the string to remove the leading and trailing whitespaces.

However, here is the version that's the easiest to remember:

csharp> string s = " aa bb \t cc dd\n "
csharp> s.Split().Where(p => p.Length > 0)
{ "aa", "bb", "cc", "dd" }

You can also add .ToList() at the end to get a list of strings.

20180405j

string.Split