How To Split A String Using Backslash As Delimiter In C# With Code Examples

Overview

In this post, I am writing about splitting a string in C# using a built-in method named String.Split is part of the String class in C# and the String.Split method is used to split a string into an array of substrings based on a specified delimiter. The delimiter can be a character or a string. The Split method returns an array of substrings, where the specified delimiter separates each substring. When the delimiter is a backslash character, it needs to be escaped with another backslash character to avoid it being interpreted as an escape sequence. In this post, I will explain how to split a string using the backslash as the delimiter in C# with code examples.

String.Split Method  in C#

As you can see in the code example below, we have a string input that contains multiple backslashes. We call the Split method on this string, passing in a single backslash as the delimiter. The Split method in C# splits a string into substrings according to the delimiter you specify. To use a backslash to separate two strings that are separated by a backslash, we need to escape a backslash with another backslash. Then We can loop through the result array to print each substring.

The string you see has been split into a collection of substrings, each separated from the others with a backslash, as you can see in the code example image above.

In the above-executed .net core console, we can see my computer C: drive on the first line, followed by Users, Ziggy, and then documents as a result.

StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries

The Split method has an optional parameter called StringSplitOptions that can be used to remove empty substrings from the array of substrings that results from the split operation. In many cases, it is common to see empty substrings in the resulting array when splitting a string with a backslash as the delimiter, especially when the input string ends with a backslash. In the code example below, we have passed StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries as the second argument to the Split method. This tells the method to remove any empty substrings from the resulting array.

When we run the same loop to print the substrings, we get the following output as the code example image below. As we can see, the empty substring at the end of the array has been removed.

Summary

In this post, we have learned that we can split a string using the backslash as the delimiter by escaping the backslash with another backslash. The resulting array can contain empty substrings, which can be removed using the StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries option. The Split method is a powerful tool for splitting strings into substrings and is commonly used in string manipulation and parsing operations. By understanding how to use the Split method with backslash as the delimiter, we developers can easily manipulate strings to their needs.

I have shared the source code for this post on my GitHub Repository, which is the following URL address-  https://github.com/ziggyrafiq/CSharpBackslashSplit 

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