Regex to replace invalid characters

Question

I don\'t have much experience with RegEx so I am using many chained String.Replace() calls to remove unwanted characters -- is there a RegEx I can write to streamline this?<

Answer 1

You would probably want to use a whitelist approach, there is an ocean of funny characters whose effect depending on combination may not be easy to figure.

A simple regex that removes everything but the allowed characters could look like this:

messyText = Regex.Replace(messyText, @"[^a-zA-Z0-9\x7C\x2C\x2E_]", "");

The ^ is there to invert the selection, apart from the alphanumeric characters this regex allows | , . and _ You can add and remove characters and character sets as needed.