In visual basic, regular expression (regex) is a pattern and it is useful to parse and validate whether the given input text is matching the defined pattern (such as an email address) or not.
Generally, the key part to process the text with regular expressions is regular expression engine and it is represented by Regex class in visual basic. The Regex class is available with System.Text.RegularExpressions namespace.
To validate the given input text using regular expressions, the Regex class will expect the following two items of information.
Following is the example of validating whether the given text is in proper email format or not using Regex class in visual basic.
Imports System.Text.RegularExpressions
Module Module1
Sub Main(ByVal args As String())
Dim email As String = "support@tutlane.com"
Dim result = Regex.IsMatch(email, "^[\w-\.]+@([\w-]+\.)+[\w-]{2,4}$")
Console.Write("Is valid: {0} ", result)
Console.ReadLine()
End Sub
End Module
If you observe the above example, we are validating whether the input string (email) is in valid email format or not using Regex class IsMatch method by sending input string and the regular expression pattern to validate the input text.
When we execute the above code, we will get the result like as shown below.
This is how the Regex class is useful to validate the input string by sending regular expression patterns based on our requirements.
In visual basic, the Regex class is having a different methods to perform various operations on input string. The following table lists various methods of Regex class in c#.
| Method | Description |
|---|---|
| IsMatch | It will determine whether the given input string matching with regular expression pattern or not. |
| Matches | It will return one or more occurrences of text that matches the regular expression pattern. |
| Replace | It will replace the text that matches the regular expression pattern. |
| Split | It will split the string into an array of substrings at the positions that match the regular expression pattern. |
These Regex class methods are useful to validate, replace or split the string values by using regular expression patterns based on our requirements.
Following is the example of finding the substrings using regular expression patterns and replace with required values in visual basic.
Imports System.Text.RegularExpressions
Module Module1
Sub Main(ByVal args As String())
Dim str As String = "Hi,welcome@to-tut#lane.com"
Dim result As String = Regex.Replace(str, "[^a-zA-Z0-9_]+", " ")
Console.Write("{0} ", result)
Console.ReadLine()
End Sub
End Module
If you observe the above example, we used Regx.Replace method to find and replace all the special characters in a string with space using regular expression patterns ("[^a-zA-Z0-9_]+").
Here, the regular expression pattern ("[^a-zA-Z0-9_]+") will try to match any single character that is not in the defined character group.
When we execute the above example, we will get the result as shown below.
Generally, while writing the content we will do common mistakes like duplicating the words. By using a regular expression pattern, we can easily identify duplicate words.
Following is the example of identifying the duplicate words in a given string using Regex class methods in visual basic.
Imports System.Text.RegularExpressions
Module Module1
Sub Main(ByVal args As String())
Dim str As String = "Welcome To to Tutlane.com. Learn c# in in easily"
Dim collection As MatchCollection = Regex.Matches(str, "\b(\w+?)\s\1\b", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase)
For Each m As Match In collection
Console.WriteLine("{0} (duplicates '{1}') at position {2}", m.Value, m.Groups(1).Value, m.Index)
Next
Console.ReadLine()
End Sub
End Module
If you observe the above example, we used Regx.Matches method to find the duplicated words using regular expression pattern ("\b(\w+?)\s\1\b").
Here, the regular expression pattern ("\b(\w+?)\s\1\b") will perform a case-insensitive search and identify the duplicate words which exist side by side like (To to or in in).
When we execute the above example, we will get the result as shown below.
To to (duplicates 'To') at position 8
in in (duplicates 'in') at position 36
This is how we can use regular expressions in visual basic to parse and validate the given string based on our requirements.