Hi, Im trying to use regular expressions in VB.Net to remove spaces at the start of a new line and end of a line, im not sure what the search syntax would be and also what the replace syntax would be? Can anyone help?

i.e.

from

Hello

to

Hello

and also multiple spaces between to words to a single space unless they are enclosed between speech marks

from

Hello World & " do not replace extra spaces here" & remove extra spaces here

to

HelloWorld & " do not replace extra spaces here" & removeextraspaces here

Note in the replace there is a space such as "${Text} " ....

Input Text

The "brown fox" jumped over...

Regular Expression

(?(\x22)#Ifitstartswithaquote,keepitasis
(?<Text>\x22[^\x22]*\x22)#ExtractittoNamedcapturegroup
|
(?<Text>[^\s]*)#ExtracttoNCG
)
(\s*)#Matchspaces/tabstoeleminatethem.

Replace Pattern

${Text}

Replacement Result

The"brownfox"jumpedover...

Regex Options

Compile	ECMA	Single Line	Multi Line	Ignore White Space	Explicit Capture	Ignore Case	Right To Left	Culture Invariant
				�/font>

Regex Info Generated by the Regex Responder V1.0

Why don't you simply use the Trim method that exists on string?

That wouldn't quite work as it would only removal spacing at the start and end of the line and not multiple spacing in the line.

Thank you.

You may want to give a better example of what you're expecting then, because i thought your example exactly wanted to remove spaces at the begin and end (and not in the 'between')...

Regex.Replace(input, @"^\s+(?<between>.*?)\s+$", "${between}") seems to do exactly the same...

Hi Tim,

Sorry example was not clear, Im looking to remove any multiple spaces throughout the sentence unless they are enclosed within speech marks.

Therefore in the following sentence I am looking to remove the extra spaces between "brown" and "fox" and "fox" and "jumped"

The brown fox jumped over....

however if enclosed in speech marks as as per the next example then I only want to remove extra line spaces between "fox" and "jumped"

The "brown fox" jumped over...

Hope this is clearer.

Thank you.

Sunny

Note in the replace there is a space such as "${Text} " ....

Input Text

The "brown fox" jumped over...

Regular Expression

(?(\x22)#Ifitstartswithaquote,keepitasis
(?<Text>\x22[^\x22]*\x22)#ExtractittoNamedcapturegroup
|
(?<Text>[^\s]*)#ExtracttoNCG
)
(\s*)#Matchspaces/tabstoeleminatethem.

Replace Pattern

${Text}

Replacement Result

The"brownfox"jumpedover...

Regex Options

Compile	ECMA	Single Line	Multi Line	Ignore White Space	Explicit Capture	Ignore Case	Right To Left	Culture Invariant
				�/font>

Regex Info Generated by the Regex Responder V1.0

That's excellent works a treat many thanks.