How to parse a string between certain characters?

Questions & Answers
1

Hello all,

I’m working on a script now that will read some code that a user has typed on a keyboard in-game and parse it so that I can send those codes to start different commands. The codes will be a single uppercase letter followed be a series of numbers. Many different codes can be entered on a single line. The code will look something like this: “G10M8X5Y5”, and I’d like to get something like this out of it: “G10”,“M8”,“X5”,“Y5”.

What parsing technique will I need to use in order to accomplish this?

Thanks!

2

Could be done with Regex and matches, here is a super simple version that should be easy to follow.

			string b = "G393Z47E18724F111";
			StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
			List<string> output = new List<string>();

			foreach( char c in b )
			{
				if( char.IsNumber(c) )
				{
					// if it's a number, lets add it to the current code.
					sb.Append(c);
					continue;
				}

				if( char.IsLetter(c) && sb.Length == 0 )
				{
					sb.Append(c);
					continue;
				}

				if( char.IsLetter(c) && sb.Length > 0 )
				{
					// we assume we have hit a new code since the builder has more then 0 characters in it and the next char coming up is a letter.
					// Lets add our previous code to the output List of string, then clear the stringbuild for the next one and append for the next code.
					output.Add(sb.ToString());
					sb.Clear();
					sb.Append(c);
					continue;
				}
			}

			// Grab the last one that wasn't captured in the foreach loop:
			output.Add(sb.ToString());

One will need to use System.Text for StringBuilder and System.Collections.Generic for the use of List. Plug this in where ever you want.

output is a List of string where each entry/element is a parsed value as you asked about.

3

You can use Split.

ex:

string allCodes = "G10,M8,X5,Y5";

// this splits the string using comma as a parameter.
// every index on the array will now have a code in it.
// note that this method requires you to use a single ' instead of "
string[] codes  = allCodes.Split(',');

// prints on the screen all the codes
foreach(string current in codes)
{
   Debug.Log(current);
}