How to determine if string contains specific substring within the first X characters

Question

I want to check whether Value1 below contains \"abc\" within the first X characters. How would you check this with an if statement?

Answer 1

You can also use regular expressions (less readable though)

string regex = "^.{0,7}abc";

System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex reg = new System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex(regex);
string Value1 = "sssddabcgghh";

Console.WriteLine(reg.Match(Value1).Success);

Answer 2

You're close... but use: if (Value1.StartsWith("abc"))

Answer 3

Or if you need to set the value of found:

found = Value1.StartsWith("abc")

Edit: Given your edit, I would do something like:

found = Value1.Substring(0, 5).Contains("abc")

Answer 4

shorter version:

found = Value1.StartsWith("abc");

sorry, but I am a stickler for 'less' code.

---

Given the edit of the questioner I would actually go with something that accepted an offset, this may in fact be a Great place to an Extension method that overloads StartsWith

public static class StackOverflowExtensions
{
    public static bool StartsWith(this String val, string findString, int count)
    {
        return val.Substring(0, count).Contains(findString);
    }
}

Answer 5

This is what you need :

if (Value1.StartsWith("abc"))
{
found = true;
}

Answer 6

Use IndexOf is easier and high performance.

int index = Value1.IndexOf("abc");
bool found = index >= 0 && index < x;