✅ Split string on list of strings and on whathever number

Hi,
I need to split a string in substrings, splitting every time I find some specific strings (e.g. ">>>") and everytime I find a number of whathever length. I can successfully split on any of the specified string, but I cannot do it with numbers. My C# code is the following:

string value = "545: hello world: <<<example text 567 king's choice>>>";

string[] separators = new string[] {||
    "<<<", 
    ">>>", 
    ":"
}

string[] substrings = value.Split(separators, StringSplitOptions.TrimEntries);

I've tried with Regex.split as well but it includes all kind of characters, so I think it's not supposed to be used like that (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.text.regularexpressions.regex.split?view=net-7.0).

Can you show what you've tried?

And the desired outcome?

Ok. Let's assume I have the string "0: standby" (it is generated by an external program and I need to translate only the relevant parts of it).
I'm trying the following approach:

string[] separators = new string[] {
    @"} SPACEFILL DP",
    @"} ZEROFILL DP",
    @":",
    @"'\%s'", 
    @"\%s'", 
    @"<<<<", 
    @"<<<", 
    @"<<", 
    @"<",
    @">>>>", 
    @">>>",
    @">>",
    @">",
    @"system\\User", 
    @"{S_NomeRicetta}",  
    @"\*\*REF", 
    @"\*\*",
    @"/\*", 
    @"\*/",
    @"____",
    @"___",
    @"[", 
    @"]",
    @"(",
    @")",
    @":",
    @"-",
    @"/",
    @",",
    @";",
    @".",
    @"\\r\\n"
};

string regEx = "\\d";
foreach (string separator in separators) {
    regEx = string.Concat(regEx, "|", separator);
}

string value = "0: standby";
string[] symbols =  Regex.Split(value, regEx);

The result I expect is an array containing the string " standby" and probably some empty string too (e.g. between 0 and :). Instead, what I got is the following array:

[0]    ""    string
[1]    ""    string
[2]    ""    string
[3]    ""    string
[4]    ""    string
[5]    ""    string
[6]    ""    string
[7]    ""    string
[8]    "S"    string
[9]    ""    string
[10]    "t"    string
[11]    ""    string
[12]    "a"    string
[13]    ""    string
[14]    "n"    string
[15]    ""    string
[16]    "d"    string
[17]    ""    string
[18]    "b"    string
[19]    ""    string
[20]    "y"    string
[21]    ""    string
[22]    ""    string

While I was testing for giving the example to you, I realized that probably there is something wrong with the regular expression

Very

I'm not really sure if you're meaning to escape some stuff in your separators?

Like what's system\\User?

Or \*\*REF? \%s?

What do you expect those to match?

For **REF, since asterisk is a regex keyword, I need to escape it in order to let regex know that I want to match exactly **REF

Asterisk is not a regex "keyword"

I thought it was from here

This one is on C# specifically

You're absolutely right, I'm sorry. I fully blanked on that one somehow

But there are also other things you need to escape

Like the period, which if not escaped, matches everything

Which is what's caused your main issue

Other things like parens, brackets, and braves need to be escaped too

Ok, thanks. I was trying to understand what are all the characters I need to escape

I was able to succeed by using this list too
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/base-types/character-escapes-in-regular-expressions

Thank you for your help