Regex - ignore text inside Paratheses

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I'm looking for a way to remove all spaces " " from a string with the exeption of the text inside paratheses ..

Obviosuly there are ways of doing this by copying and replacing portions of the text, but I beleive there has to be an "easier"- cleaner way by using regex - I just can't figure it out..

sample String :

Remove all spaces from this (Don't remove spaces from this) Again remove spaces

This should look like this after applying the regex.replace

Removeallspacesfromthis(Don't remove spaces from this)Againremovespaces

any Ideas :-)

Posted 12-Aug-12 12:01pm

Georg Kohler

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Andreas Gieriet · Answer 1 · 2012-08-15T03:40:00

If you can make sure that there are no nested parenthsis, you can do it in Regex. Otherwise you can not.

E.g. in C#:

C#

string input = "Remove all spaces from this (Don't remove spaces from this) Again remove spaces";
string output = Regex.Replace(input, @"\s*(\(.*?\)|\S+)\s*", "$1");
Console.WriteLine(input);
Console.WriteLine(output);

This results in

Remove all spaces from this (Don't remove spaces from this) Again remove spaces
Removeallspacesfromthis(Don't remove spaces from this)Againremovespaces

Cheers
Andi

Kenneth Haugland · Answer 2 · 2012-08-12T12:05:00

Solution 1

Yes, use balanced grouping:
In Depth with .NET RegEx Balanced Grouping[^]

BTW: Here is a great tool for constructing and deconstructing RegEx patterns:
Expresso - A Tool for Building and Testing Regular Expressions[^]

Posted 12-Aug-12 12:05pm

Kenneth Haugland

Updated 15-Aug-12 3:52am

v2