C# string comparison ignoring spaces, carriage return or line breaks
Solution 1:
You should normalize each string by removing the characters that you don't want to compare and then you can perform a String.Equals with a StringComparison that ignores case.
Something like this:
string s1 = "HeLLo wOrld!";
string s2 = "Hello\n WORLd!";
string normalized1 = Regex.Replace(s1, @"\s", "");
string normalized2 = Regex.Replace(s2, @"\s", "");
bool stringEquals = String.Equals(
normalized1,
normalized2,
StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase);
Console.WriteLine(stringEquals);
Here Regex.Replace is used first to remove all whitespace characters. The special case of both strings being null is not treated here but you can easily handle that case before performing the string normalization.
Solution 2:
This may also work.
String.Compare(s1, s2, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture, CompareOptions.IgnoreCase | CompareOptions.IgnoreSymbols) == 0
Edit:
IgnoreSymbols: Indicates that the string comparison must ignore symbols, such as white-space characters, punctuation, currency symbols, the percent sign, mathematical symbols, the ampersand, and so on.
Solution 3:
Remove all the characters you don't want and then use the ToLower() method to ignore case.
edit: While the above works, it's better to use StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase. Just pass it as the second argument to the Equals method.
Solution 4:
First replace all whitespace via regular expression from both string and then use the String.Compare method with parameter ignoreCase = true.
string a = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace("void foo", @"\s", "");
string b = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace("voidFoo", @"\s", "");
bool isTheSame = String.Compare(a, b, true) == 0;
Solution 5:
If you need performance, the Regex solutions on this page run too slow for you. Maybe you have a large list of strings you want to sort. (A Regex solution is more readable however)
I have a class that looks at each individual char in both strings and compares them while ignoring case and whitespace. It doesn't allocate any new strings. It uses the char.IsWhiteSpace(ch) to determine whitespace, and char.ToLowerInvariant(ch) for case-insensitivity (if required). In my testing, my solution runs about 5x - 8x faster than a Regex-based solution. My class also implements IEqualityComparer's GetHashCode(obj) method using this code in another SO answer. This GetHashCode(obj) also ignores whitespace and optionally ignores case.
Here's my class:
private class StringCompIgnoreWhiteSpace : IEqualityComparer<string>
{
public bool Equals(string strx, string stry)
{
if (strx == null) //stry may contain only whitespace
return string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(stry);
else if (stry == null) //strx may contain only whitespace
return string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(strx);
int ix = 0, iy = 0;
for (; ix < strx.Length && iy < stry.Length; ix++, iy++)
{
char chx = strx[ix];
char chy = stry[iy];
//ignore whitespace in strx
while (char.IsWhiteSpace(chx) && ix < strx.Length)
{
ix++;
chx = strx[ix];
}
//ignore whitespace in stry
while (char.IsWhiteSpace(chy) && iy < stry.Length)
{
iy++;
chy = stry[iy];
}
if (ix == strx.Length && iy != stry.Length)
{ //end of strx, so check if the rest of stry is whitespace
for (int iiy = iy + 1; iiy < stry.Length; iiy++)
{
if (!char.IsWhiteSpace(stry[iiy]))
return false;
}
return true;
}
if (ix != strx.Length && iy == stry.Length)
{ //end of stry, so check if the rest of strx is whitespace
for (int iix = ix + 1; iix < strx.Length; iix++)
{
if (!char.IsWhiteSpace(strx[iix]))
return false;
}
return true;
}
//The current chars are not whitespace, so check that they're equal (case-insensitive)
//Remove the following two lines to make the comparison case-sensitive.
chx = char.ToLowerInvariant(chx);
chy = char.ToLowerInvariant(chy);
if (chx != chy)
return false;
}
//If strx has more chars than stry
for (; ix < strx.Length; ix++)
{
if (!char.IsWhiteSpace(strx[ix]))
return false;
}
//If stry has more chars than strx
for (; iy < stry.Length; iy++)
{
if (!char.IsWhiteSpace(stry[iy]))
return false;
}
return true;
}
public int GetHashCode(string obj)
{
if (obj == null)
return 0;
int hash = 17;
unchecked // Overflow is fine, just wrap
{
for (int i = 0; i < obj.Length; i++)
{
char ch = obj[i];
if(!char.IsWhiteSpace(ch))
//use this line for case-insensitivity
hash = hash * 23 + char.ToLowerInvariant(ch).GetHashCode();
//use this line for case-sensitivity
//hash = hash * 23 + ch.GetHashCode();
}
}
return hash;
}
}
private static void TestComp()
{
var comp = new StringCompIgnoreWhiteSpace();
Console.WriteLine(comp.Equals("abcd", "abcd")); //true
Console.WriteLine(comp.Equals("abCd", "Abcd")); //true
Console.WriteLine(comp.Equals("ab Cd", "Ab\n\r\tcd ")); //true
Console.WriteLine(comp.Equals(" ab Cd", " A b" + Environment.NewLine + "cd ")); //true
Console.WriteLine(comp.Equals(null, " \t\n\r ")); //true
Console.WriteLine(comp.Equals(" \t\n\r ", null)); //true
Console.WriteLine(comp.Equals("abcd", "abcd h")); //false
Console.WriteLine(comp.GetHashCode(" a b c d")); //-699568861
//This is -699568861 if you #define StringCompIgnoreWhiteSpace_CASE_INSENSITIVE
// Otherwise it's -1555613149
Console.WriteLine(comp.GetHashCode("A B c \t d"));
}
Here's my testing code (with a Regex example):
private static void SpeedTest()
{
const int loop = 100000;
string first = "a bc d";
string second = "ABC D";
var compChar = new StringCompIgnoreWhiteSpace();
Stopwatch sw1 = Stopwatch.StartNew();
for (int i = 0; i < loop; i++)
{
bool equals = compChar.Equals(first, second);
}
sw1.Stop();
Console.WriteLine(string.Format("char time = {0}", sw1.Elapsed)); //char time = 00:00:00.0361159
var compRegex = new StringCompIgnoreWhiteSpaceRegex();
Stopwatch sw2 = Stopwatch.StartNew();
for (int i = 0; i < loop; i++)
{
bool equals = compRegex.Equals(first, second);
}
sw2.Stop();
Console.WriteLine(string.Format("regex time = {0}", sw2.Elapsed)); //regex time = 00:00:00.2773072
}
private class StringCompIgnoreWhiteSpaceRegex : IEqualityComparer<string>
{
public bool Equals(string strx, string stry)
{
if (strx == null)
return string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(stry);
else if (stry == null)
return string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(strx);
string a = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(strx, @"\s", "");
string b = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(stry, @"\s", "");
return String.Compare(a, b, true) == 0;
}
public int GetHashCode(string obj)
{
if (obj == null)
return 0;
string a = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(obj, @"\s", "");
return a.GetHashCode();
}
}