OrderBy String within String with Wildcards

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I have an application that lists files within a directory. The files have various lengths but they have a string I wish to sort them by in the middle of the file name.

Here is an example of the file names, the string I want to sort by is the B1A32 and B2A39 section.

thisisafilestringB1A32continuedstring.dat
thisisanotherfilestringB2A39continuedotherstring.dat

I have been using the following code to sort by date and name:

VB

Dim files As Linq.IOrderedEnumerable(Of IO.FileInfo)

files = New DirectoryInfo(My.Settings("Store" & clickedTbNumber)).GetFiles().OrderBy(Function(f As FileInfo) f.CreationTime)

files = New DirectoryInfo(My.Settings("Store" & clickedTbNumber)).GetFiles().OrderBy(Function(f As FileInfo) f.Name)

How can I sort the files by the B1A32 and B2A39 strings in the middle of the string? I am using Visual Basic 2010 Express.

Posted 13-Feb-14 14:04pm

Lambda09a

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Matt T Heffron · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-13T14:38:00

Assuming you can better define the actual pattern you want to use, something like this:
I'm going to assume the pattern is

Uppercase letter B
followed by 1 or more digits
followed by uppercase letter A
followed by 1 or more digits.

And that you can guarantee it occurs only once in any filename.

VB

Function SortMidName (name as String) As String
  Dim rgx As New Regex("(B\d+A\d+)")
  Dim match As Match = rgx.Match(name)
  If match.Success Then
    Return match.Groups(1).Value
  End If
  Return String.Empty  ' Or fail in some other way
End Function


files = New DirectoryInfo(My.Settings("Store" && clickedTbNumber)).GetFiles().OrderBy(Function(f As FileInfo) SortMidName(f.Name))

Take the above with a grain of salt... my VB is pretty weak (my c# on the other hand!)