I have a method that has an if statement that catches if it finds a special character. What I want to do now if find the position of the special characters and replace it with _A
Some Examples
test# becomes test_A
I#hope#someone#knows#the#answer# becomes I_Ahope_Asomeone_Aknows_Athe_Aanswer_A
or if it has more than one special character
- You?didnt#understand{my?Question# becomes You_Adidnt_Aunderstand_Amy_AQuestion_A
Would I have to loop through the whole string and when I reach that character change it to _A or is there a quicker way of doing this?
1 Answer
# is just a character like any other, you can use the -replace operator:
PS C:\>'I#hope#someone#knows#the#answer#' -replace '#','_A' I_Ahope_Asomeone_Aknows_Athe_Aanswer_A Regex is magic, you can define all the special cases you like (braces will have to be escaped):
PS C:\>'You?didnt#understand{my?Question#' -replace '[#?\{]','_A' You_Adidnt_Aunderstand_Amy_AQuestion_A So your function could look something like this:
function Replace-SpecialChars { param($InputString) $SpecialChars = '[#?\{\[\(\)\]\}]' $Replacement = '_A' $InputString -replace $SpecialChars,$Replacement } Replace-SpecialChars -InputString 'You?didnt#write{a]very[good?Question#' If you are unsure of which characters to escape, have the regex class do it for you!
function Replace-SpecialChars { param( [string]$InputString, [string]$Replacement = "_A", [string]$SpecialChars = "#?()[]{}" ) $rePattern = ($SpecialChars.ToCharArray() |ForEach-Object { [regex]::Escape($_) }) -join "|" $InputString -replace $rePattern,$Replacement } Alternatively, you can use the .NET string method Replace():
'You?didnt#understand{my?Question#'.Replace('#','_A').Replace('?','_A').Replace('{','_A') But I feel the regex way is more concise
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