Match at every second occurrence

Question

Is there a way to specify a regular expression to match every 2nd occurrence of a pattern in a string?

Examples

• searching for a agains

Answer 1

If you're using C#, you can either get all the matches at once (i.e. use Regex.Matches(), which returns a MatchCollection, and check the index of the item: index % 2 != 0).

If you want to find the occurrence to replace it, use one of the overloads of Regex.Replace() that uses a MatchEvaluator (e.g. Regex.Replace(String, String, MatchEvaluator). Here's the code:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string input = "abcdabcd";

            // Replace *second* a with m

            string replacedString = Regex.Replace(
                input,
                "a",
                new SecondOccuranceFinder("m").MatchEvaluator);

            Console.WriteLine(replacedString);
            Console.Read();

        }

        class SecondOccuranceFinder
        {
            public SecondOccuranceFinder(string replaceWith)
            {
                _replaceWith = replaceWith;
                _matchEvaluator = new MatchEvaluator(IsSecondOccurance);
            }

            private string _replaceWith;

            private MatchEvaluator _matchEvaluator;
            public MatchEvaluator MatchEvaluator
            {
                get
                {
                    return _matchEvaluator;
                }
            }

            private int _matchIndex;
            public string IsSecondOccurance(Match m)
            {
                _matchIndex++;
                if (_matchIndex % 2 == 0)
                    return _replaceWith;
                else
                    return m.Value;
            }
        }
    }
}