How do I remove empty cells in a string array?

Question

I am working on an assignment where I generate an array of string objects read from a text file. I can't use regex \W operator because if a word contains an apostrophe (') or hyphen (-) as part of the word, it must be included. \W splits on those tokens. However, I need it to split on everything else that is not a letter, including numbers. So my strings should include a-z,A-Z,-,' format.

The code I have is below and it gives me almost the correct output, but I have empty cells in the array where it is reading the end of the line (or new line). I can't figure out how to exclude those (\n\r) while keeping the split that I have. Advice?

try
{
    using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader("file.txt"))
    {
        string line;
        while ((line = reader.ReadLine()) != null)
        {
            string[] words = SplitWords(line.ToLower());
            foreach (string aString in words)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(aString);
            }
        }
    }
}
catch (Exception e)
{
    Console.WriteLine("The file could not be read:");
    Console.WriteLine(e.Message);
}

static string[] SplitWords(string lines)
{
    return Regex.Split(lines, @"[^-'a-zA-Z]");
}

Kamil Budziewski · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-04 06:57:26Z

1

Try this

return Regex.Split(lines, @"[^-'a-zA-Z]")
                              .Where(x=>!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(x)).ToArray();

Use IsNullOrWhiteSpace and linq for extracting only matching elements to new array

answered Nov 4, 2013 at 6:57

Kamil Budziewski

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1 Comment

user2951579 Over a year ago

Thanks! This gives me just what I wanted. Waiting on timer to mark this for my accepted answer. Thank you for the rapid response.

p.s.w.g · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-04 06:57:09Z

1

You could do this with a little Linq. Use this to exclude any empty strings:

static string[] SplitWords(string lines)
{
    return Regex.Split(lines, @"[^-'a-zA-Z]")
                .Where(s => s.Length > 0)
                .ToArray();
}

Or this to exclude any strings consisting solely whitespace:

static string[] SplitWords(string lines)
{
    return Regex.Split(lines, @"[^-'a-zA-Z]")
                .Where(s => !s.All(Char.IsWhiteSpace))
                .ToArray();
}

answered Nov 4, 2013 at 6:57

p.s.w.g

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