Splitting a string into chunks of a certain size

Suppose I had a string:

string str = "1111222233334444"; 

How can I break this string into chunks of some size?

e.g., breaking this into sizes of 4 would return strings:

"1111"
"2222"
"3333"
"4444"

Solution 1:

static IEnumerable<string> Split(string str, int chunkSize)
{
    return Enumerable.Range(0, str.Length / chunkSize)
        .Select(i => str.Substring(i * chunkSize, chunkSize));
}

Please note that additional code might be required to gracefully handle edge cases (null or empty input string, chunkSize == 0, input string length not divisible by chunkSize, etc.). The original question doesn't specify any requirements for these edge cases and in real life the requirements might vary so they are out of scope of this answer.

Solution 2:

In a combination of dove+Konstatin's answers...

static IEnumerable<string> WholeChunks(string str, int chunkSize) {
    for (int i = 0; i < str.Length; i += chunkSize) 
        yield return str.Substring(i, chunkSize);
}

This will work for all strings that can be split into a whole number of chunks, and will throw an exception otherwise.

If you want to support strings of any length you could use the following code:

static IEnumerable<string> ChunksUpto(string str, int maxChunkSize) {
    for (int i = 0; i < str.Length; i += maxChunkSize) 
        yield return str.Substring(i, Math.Min(maxChunkSize, str.Length-i));
}

However, the the OP explicitly stated he does not need this; it's somewhat longer and harder to read, slightly slower. In the spirit of KISS and YAGNI, I'd go with the first option: it's probably the most efficient implementation possible, and it's very short, readable, and, importantly, throws an exception for nonconforming input.

Solution 3:

Why not loops? Here's something that would do it quite well:

        string str = "111122223333444455";
        int chunkSize = 4;
        int stringLength = str.Length;
        for (int i = 0; i < stringLength ; i += chunkSize)
        {
            if (i + chunkSize > stringLength) chunkSize = stringLength  - i;
            Console.WriteLine(str.Substring(i, chunkSize));

        }
        Console.ReadLine();

I don't know how you'd deal with case where the string is not factor of 4, but not saying you're idea is not possible, just wondering the motivation for it if a simple for loop does it very well? Obviously the above could be cleaned and even put in as an extension method.

Or as mentioned in comments, you know it's /4 then

str = "1111222233334444";
for (int i = 0; i < stringLength; i += chunkSize) 
  {Console.WriteLine(str.Substring(i, chunkSize));} 

Solution 4:

Using regular expressions and Linq:

List<string> groups = (from Match m in Regex.Matches(str, @"\d{4}")
                       select m.Value).ToList();

I find this to be more readable, but it's just a personal opinion. It can also be a one-liner : ).