How to read RegEx Captures in C#

The C# regex API can be quite confusing. There are groups and captures:

• A group represents a capturing group, it's used to extract a substring from the text
• There can be several captures per group, if the group appears inside a quantifier.

The hierarchy is:

• Match
  • Group
    • Capture

(a match can have several groups, and each group can have several captures)

For example:

Subject: aabcabbc
Pattern: ^(?:(a+b+)c)+$

In this example, there is only one group: (a+b+). This group is inside a quantifier, and is matched twice. It generates two captures: aab and abb:

aabcabbc
^^^ ^^^
Cap1  Cap2

When a group is not inside of a quantifier, it generates only one capture. In your case, you have 3 groups, and each group captures once. You can use match.Groups[1].Value, match.Groups[2].Value and match.Groups[3].Value to extract the 3 substrings you're interested in, without resorting to the capture notion at all.

Match results can be complicated to understand. I wrote this code to assist my understanding of what had been found and where. The intention is that pieces of the output (from the lines marked with //**) can be copied into the program to make use of values found in the match.

public static void DisplayMatchResults(Match match)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Match has {0} captures", match.Captures.Count);

    int groupNo = 0;
    foreach (Group mm in match.Groups)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("  Group {0,2} has {1,2} captures '{2}'", groupNo, mm.Captures.Count, mm.Value);

        int captureNo = 0;
        foreach (Capture cc in mm.Captures)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("       Capture {0,2} '{1}'", captureNo, cc);
            captureNo++;
        }
        groupNo++;
    }

    groupNo = 0;
    foreach (Group mm in match.Groups)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("    match.Groups[{0}].Value == \"{1}\"", groupNo, match.Groups[groupNo].Value); //**
        groupNo++;
    }

    groupNo = 0;
    foreach (Group mm in match.Groups)
    {
        int captureNo = 0;
        foreach (Capture cc in mm.Captures)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("    match.Groups[{0}].Captures[{1}].Value == \"{2}\"", groupNo, captureNo, match.Groups[groupNo].Captures[captureNo].Value); //**
            captureNo++;
        }
        groupNo++;
    }
}

A simple example of using this method, given this input:

Regex regex = new Regex("/([A-Za-z]+)/(\\d+)$");
String text = "some/directory/Pictures/Houses/12/apple/banana/"
            + "cherry/345/damson/elderberry/fig/678/gooseberry");
Match match = regex.Match(text);
DisplayMatchResults(match);

The output is:

Match has 1 captures
  Group  0 has  1 captures '/Houses/12'
       Capture  0 '/Houses/12'
  Group  1 has  1 captures 'Houses'
       Capture  0 'Houses'
  Group  2 has  1 captures '12'
       Capture  0 '12'
    match.Groups[0].Value == "/Houses/12"
    match.Groups[1].Value == "Houses"
    match.Groups[2].Value == "12"
    match.Groups[0].Captures[0].Value == "/Houses/12"
    match.Groups[1].Captures[0].Value == "Houses"
    match.Groups[2].Captures[0].Value == "12"

Suppose that we want to find all matches of the above regular expression in the above text. Then we can use a MatchCollection in code such as:

MatchCollection matches = regex.Matches(text);
for (int ii = 0; ii < matches.Count; ii++)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Match[{0}]  // of 0..{1}:", ii, matches.Count-1);
    RegexMatchDisplay.DisplayMatchResults(matches[ii]);
}

The output from this is:

Match[0]  // of 0..2:
Match has 1 captures
  Group  0 has  1 captures '/Houses/12/'
       Capture  0 '/Houses/12/'
  Group  1 has  1 captures 'Houses'
       Capture  0 'Houses'
  Group  2 has  1 captures '12'
       Capture  0 '12'
    match.Groups[0].Value == "/Houses/12/"
    match.Groups[1].Value == "Houses"
    match.Groups[2].Value == "12"
    match.Groups[0].Captures[0].Value == "/Houses/12/"
    match.Groups[1].Captures[0].Value == "Houses"
    match.Groups[2].Captures[0].Value == "12"
Match[1]  // of 0..2:
Match has 1 captures
  Group  0 has  1 captures '/cherry/345/'
       Capture  0 '/cherry/345/'
  Group  1 has  1 captures 'cherry'
       Capture  0 'cherry'
  Group  2 has  1 captures '345'
       Capture  0 '345'
    match.Groups[0].Value == "/cherry/345/"
    match.Groups[1].Value == "cherry"
    match.Groups[2].Value == "345"
    match.Groups[0].Captures[0].Value == "/cherry/345/"
    match.Groups[1].Captures[0].Value == "cherry"
    match.Groups[2].Captures[0].Value == "345"
Match[2]  // of 0..2:
Match has 1 captures
  Group  0 has  1 captures '/fig/678/'
       Capture  0 '/fig/678/'
  Group  1 has  1 captures 'fig'
       Capture  0 'fig'
  Group  2 has  1 captures '678'
       Capture  0 '678'
    match.Groups[0].Value == "/fig/678/"
    match.Groups[1].Value == "fig"
    match.Groups[2].Value == "678"
    match.Groups[0].Captures[0].Value == "/fig/678/"
    match.Groups[1].Captures[0].Value == "fig"
    match.Groups[2].Captures[0].Value == "678"

Hence:

    matches[1].Groups[0].Value == "/cherry/345/"
    matches[1].Groups[1].Value == "cherry"
    matches[1].Groups[2].Value == "345"
    matches[1].Groups[0].Captures[0].Value == "/cherry/345/"
    matches[1].Groups[1].Captures[0].Value == "cherry"
    matches[1].Groups[2].Captures[0].Value == "345"

Similarly for matches[0] and matches[2].