Highlight a list of words using a regular expression in c#

Question

I have some site content that contains abbreviations. I have a list of recognised abbreviations for the site, along with their explanations. I want to create a regular expre

Answer 1

First you would need to Regex.Escape() all the input strings.

Then you can look for them in the string, and iteratively replace them by the markup you have in mind:

string abbr      = "memb";
string word      = "Member";
string pattern   = String.Format("\b{0}\b", Regex.Escape(abbr));
string substitue = String.Format("[a title=\"{0}\"]{1}[/a]", word, abbr);
string output    = Regex.Replace(input, pattern, substitue);

EDIT: I asked if a simple String.Replace() wouldn't be enough - but I can see why regex is desirable: you can use it to enforce "whole word" replacements only by making a pattern that uses word boundary anchors.

You can go as far as building a single pattern from all your escaped input strings, like this:

\b(?:{abbr_1}|{abbr_2}|{abbr_3}|{abbr_n})\b

and then using a match evaluator to find the right replacement. This way you can avoid iterating the input string more than once.