Simple string replace in xml

Question

I have a string that contains a fair bit of XML, it's actually xml that describes a word document(document.xml). I want to simply replace a part of the string with an empty string effectivally removing it from the string. This sounds straight forward but I'm not getting the result I expect.

Here is what some of the XML looks like, this is just the first 10 lines:

<w:body xmlns:w="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/wordprocessingml/2006/main">
    <w:p w:rsidR="00CB3A3E" w:rsidP="00257CF7" w:rsidRDefault="008C1E91">
        <w:pPr>
            <w:pStyle w:val="Heading-Title" />
        </w:pPr>
        <w:r>
            <w:t>References</w:t>
        </w:r>
    </w:p>
    <w:sdt>

As I said this is in a string. I simply try to replace <w:t>References</w:t> with an empty string. I am doing it like so:

//xmlBody is the string that is holding the xml
xmlBody.Replace("<w:t>References</w:t>", " ");

This is not working, the string is unaltered when I do this. What am I doing wrong? Any advice would be appreciated, thanks much!

Please try to use proper XML objects to manipulate XML. First you will not produce invalud XML this way and second you'll avoid asking "how to parse/search XML with regular expressions" when you find that <w:t> could be on separeate lines from text or something similar. — Alexei Levenkov
– Alexei Levenkov, Commented Aug 8, 2012 at 19:34

Coeffect · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-08 19:04:49Z

3

xmlBody = xmlBody.Replace("<w:t>References</w:t>", "");

The Replace function doesn't change the source string; it returns a new string with the changes made. In fact, C# strings cannot be changed. If you check out the documentation, it says that they're immutable.

answered Aug 8, 2012 at 19:04

Coeffect

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Nikola Anusev · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-08 19:06:15Z

3

In C#, string is not mutable - once created, it cannot be changed. Replace returns a new instance of string. Therefore, you need to catch its return value:

xmlBody = xmlBody.Replace("<w:t>References</w:t>", " ");

As a sidenote, it is not considered a good practice to parse XML-based strings with regular expressions, because it's too fragile. Consider using XDocument or some such to remove elements you are after.

answered Aug 8, 2012 at 19:06

Nikola Anusev

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Sam I am says Reinstate Monica · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-08 19:05:28Z

2

string.replace returns a new string, it doesn't change the original string

try

xmlBody = xmlBody.Replace("<w:t>References</w:t>", " ");

answered Aug 8, 2012 at 19:05

Sam I am says Reinstate Monica

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steveg89 · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-08 19:05:38Z

1

Replace isn't an inline replacement... it returns a new string with the replacement made.

answered Aug 8, 2012 at 19:05

steveg89

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farr3ll · Accepted Answer · 2024-10-04 20:17:18Z

0

Replace everything between <w.t> tags with an empty string:

xmlBody = Regex.Replace(xmlBody,
                        @"<w:t>[\s\S]*?</w:t>",
                        "<w:t></w:t>");

edited Oct 4, 2024 at 20:17

answered Oct 4, 2024 at 20:16

farr3ll

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