Find how many time word repeat in string

Question

I have a text file like this

TOM*SAID*THAT~
TOM*SAID*THAT~

I would like to count how many times TOM occurred? The TOM should be always in the beginning of the line and will be following by *

I am using the following code and I can get the number of time occurred. However, the matches collection shows the matched substring is ~TO. The M is missing. 

var matches = Regex.Matches(content, "~TOM*");

Is that anything missing?

Answer 1

You caid you wanna look for word "TOM" and not "~TOM". There is no such occurrences in your example - as far as I can see. So for the pattern you take "TOM" only.

Instead of using Regex, we can use Linq to get the number of occurences of some item:

string filePath = @"C:\myfile.txt";
string text = File.ReadAllText(filePath);
int Tom_Repeats = text.ToCharArray().Where(w => w == 'TOM').Select(s => s).Count();
MessageBox.Show(string.Format("In a file {0} a word TOM repeats {1} times.", filePath, Tom_Repeats));

Bellow is how to use Regex too.

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Mitja

Answer 2

Part of your issue probably has to do with the fact that * is a reserved character.  You need to escape it with a \

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Answer 3

or using Regex:

string filePath = @"C:\myfile.txt";
string text = File.ReadAllText(filePath);
MatchCollection matches = Regex.Matches(text, "TOM");

MessageBox.Show(string.Format("In a file {0} a word TOM repeats {1} times.", filePath, matches.Count));

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Mitja

Answer 4

This code may help you.

var matches = Regex.Matches(content, "[\r\n|]TOM[*]"); //check TOM* with new line

var matches = Regex.Matches(content, "TOM[*]");//check only  TOM* 

 

Answer 5

Try this too:

int count = Regex.Matches( text, @"^TOM[*]", RegexOptions.Multiline ).Count;

Answer 6

Hi TravelMan,

  I suggest you that you can read this thread,its topic is the same to you.

  word count

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/csharpgeneral/thread/a4de4e46-329e-4ad5-b8b2-b22f0a58b7bf 

Sincerely,

Jason Wang

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Jason Wang [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 7

Thanks everyone response. Maybe I didn't describe my case clearly. I don't see any feedback met my requirement.

The character ~ is the end of segment. There may have multiple line breaks or line break plus multiple spaces. I need cover all kinds of cases finding out how many specific format TOM string.  

It appears cover all cases if I change code to following

var matches = Regex.Matches(content, "~\s*TOM\*");

it will cover the following input
TOM*......~    
TOM*~<multiple line breaks>
TOM*~TOM*~

Again, thanks everyone's input.