Remove characters from C# string

How might I remove characters from a string? For example: "My name @is ,Wan.;'; Wan".

I would like to remove the characters '@', ',', '.', ';', '\'' from that string so that it becomes "My name is Wan Wan"

Solution 1:

var str = "My name @is ,Wan.;'; Wan";
var charsToRemove = new string[] { "@", ",", ".", ";", "'" };
foreach (var c in charsToRemove)
{
    str = str.Replace(c, string.Empty);
}

But I may suggest another approach if you want to remove all non letter characters

var str = "My name @is ,Wan.;'; Wan";
str = new string((from c in str
                  where char.IsWhiteSpace(c) || char.IsLetterOrDigit(c)
                  select c
       ).ToArray());

Solution 2:

Simple:

String.Join("", "My name @is ,Wan.;'; Wan".Split('@', ',' ,'.' ,';', '\''));

Solution 3:

Sounds like an ideal application for RegEx -- an engine designed for fast text manipulation. In this case:

Regex.Replace("He\"ll,o Wo'r.ld", "[@,\\.\";'\\\\]", string.Empty)

Solution 4:

Comparing various suggestions (as well as comparing in the context of single-character replacements with various sizes and positions of the target).

In this particular case, splitting on the targets and joining on the replacements (in this case, empty string) is the fastest by at least a factor of 3. Ultimately, performance is different depending on the number of replacements, where the replacements are in the source, and the size of the source. #ymmv

Results

(full results here)

| Test                      | Compare | Elapsed                                                            |
|---------------------------|---------|--------------------------------------------------------------------|
| SplitJoin                 | 1.00x   | 29023 ticks elapsed (2.9023 ms) [in 10K reps, 0.00029023 ms per]   |
| Replace                   | 2.77x   | 80295 ticks elapsed (8.0295 ms) [in 10K reps, 0.00080295 ms per]   |
| RegexCompiled             | 5.27x   | 152869 ticks elapsed (15.2869 ms) [in 10K reps, 0.00152869 ms per] |
| LinqSplit                 | 5.43x   | 157580 ticks elapsed (15.758 ms) [in 10K reps, 0.0015758 ms per]   |
| Regex, Uncompiled         | 5.85x   | 169667 ticks elapsed (16.9667 ms) [in 10K reps, 0.00169667 ms per] |
| Regex                     | 6.81x   | 197551 ticks elapsed (19.7551 ms) [in 10K reps, 0.00197551 ms per] |
| RegexCompiled Insensitive | 7.33x   | 212789 ticks elapsed (21.2789 ms) [in 10K reps, 0.00212789 ms per] |
| Regex Insensitive         | 7.52x   | 218164 ticks elapsed (21.8164 ms) [in 10K reps, 0.00218164 ms per] |

Test Harness (LinqPad)

(note: the Perf and Vs are timing extensions I wrote)

void test(string title, string sample, string target, string replacement) {
    var targets = target.ToCharArray();
    
    var tox = "[" + target + "]";
    var x = new Regex(tox);
    var xc = new Regex(tox, RegexOptions.Compiled);
    var xci = new Regex(tox, RegexOptions.Compiled | RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

    // no, don't dump the results
    var p = new Perf/*<string>*/();
        p.Add(string.Join(" ", title, "Replace"), n => targets.Aggregate(sample, (res, curr) => res.Replace(new string(curr, 1), replacement)));
        p.Add(string.Join(" ", title, "SplitJoin"), n => String.Join(replacement, sample.Split(targets)));
        p.Add(string.Join(" ", title, "LinqSplit"), n => String.Concat(sample.Select(c => targets.Contains(c) ? replacement : new string(c, 1))));
        p.Add(string.Join(" ", title, "Regex"), n => Regex.Replace(sample, tox, replacement));
        p.Add(string.Join(" ", title, "Regex Insentive"), n => Regex.Replace(sample, tox, replacement, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase));
        p.Add(string.Join(" ", title, "Regex, Uncompiled"), n => x.Replace(sample, replacement));
        p.Add(string.Join(" ", title, "RegexCompiled"), n => xc.Replace(sample, replacement));
        p.Add(string.Join(" ", title, "RegexCompiled Insensitive"), n => xci.Replace(sample, replacement));
    
    var trunc = 40;
    var header = sample.Length > trunc ? sample.Substring(0, trunc) + "..." : sample;
    
    p.Vs(header);
}

void Main()
{
    // also see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7411438/remove-characters-from-c-sharp-string
    
    "Control".Perf(n => { var s = "*"; });
    
        
    var text = "My name @is ,Wan.;'; Wan";
    var clean = new[] { '@', ',', '.', ';', '\'' };
    
    test("stackoverflow", text, string.Concat(clean), string.Empty);

    
    var target = "o";
    var f = "x";
    var replacement = "1";
    
    var fillers = new Dictionary<string, string> {
        { "short", new String(f[0], 10) },
        { "med", new String(f[0], 300) },
        { "long", new String(f[0], 1000) },
        { "huge", new String(f[0], 10000) }
    };
    
    var formats = new Dictionary<string, string> {
        { "start", "{0}{1}{1}" },
        { "middle", "{1}{0}{1}" },
        { "end", "{1}{1}{0}" }
    };

    foreach(var filler in fillers)
    foreach(var format in formats) {
        var title = string.Join("-", filler.Key, format.Key);
        var sample = string.Format(format.Value, target, filler.Value);
        
        test(title, sample, target, replacement);
    }
}

Solution 5:

Less specific to your question, it is possible to remove ALL punctuation from a string (except space) by white listing the acceptable characters in a regular expression:

string dirty = "My name @is ,Wan.;'; Wan";

// only space, capital A-Z, lowercase a-z, and digits 0-9 are allowed in the string
string clean = Regex.Replace(dirty, "[^A-Za-z0-9 ]", "");

Note there is a space after that 9 so as not to remove spaces from your sentence. The third argument is an empty string which serves to replace any substring that does not belong in the regular expression.