How can I perform a culture-sensitive “starts-with” operation from the middle of a string?

Question

I have a requirement which is relatively obscure, but it feels like it should be possible using the BCL.

For context, I\'m parsing a date/time string in Nod

Answer 1

See if this meets the requirement .. :

public static partial class GlobalizationExtensions {
    public static int IsPrefix(
        this CompareInfo compareInfo,
        String source, String prefix, int startIndex, CompareOptions options
        ) {
        if(compareInfo.IndexOf(source, prefix, startIndex, options)!=startIndex)
            return ~0;
        else
            // source is started with prefix
            // therefore the loop must exit
            for(int length2=0, length1=prefix.Length; ; )
                if(0==compareInfo.Compare(
                        prefix, 0, length1, 
                        source, startIndex, ++length2, options))
                    return length2;
    }
}

compareInfo.Compare only performs once source started with prefix; if it didn't, then IsPrefix returns -1; otherwise, the length of characters used in source.

However, I have no idea except increment length2 by 1 with the following case:

var candidate="ßssß\u00E9\u0302";
var text="abcd ssßss\u0065\u0301\u0302sss";

var count=
    culture.CompareInfo.IsPrefix(text, candidate, 5, CompareOptions.IgnoreCase);

---

update:

I tried to improve a little bit of perf., but it isn't proved whether there's bug in the following code:

public static partial class GlobalizationExtensions {
    public static int Compare(
        this CompareInfo compareInfo,
        String source, String prefix, int startIndex, ref int length2, 
        CompareOptions options) {
        int length1=prefix.Length, v2, v1;

        if(0==(v1=compareInfo.Compare(
            prefix, 0, length1, source, startIndex, length2, options))
            ) {
            return 0;
        }
        else {
            if(0==(v2=compareInfo.Compare(
                prefix, 0, length1, source, startIndex, 1+length2, options))
                ) {
                ++length2;
                return 0;
            }
            else {
                if(v1<0||v2<0) {
                    length2-=2;
                    return -1;
                }
                else {
                    length2+=2;
                    return 1;
                }
            }
        }
    }

    public static int IsPrefix(
        this CompareInfo compareInfo,
        String source, String prefix, int startIndex, CompareOptions options
        ) {
        if(compareInfo.IndexOf(source, prefix, startIndex, options)
                !=startIndex)
            return ~0;
        else
            for(int length2=
                    Math.Min(prefix.Length, source.Length-(1+startIndex)); ; )
                if(0==compareInfo.Compare(
                        source, prefix, startIndex, ref length2, options))
                    return length2;
    }
}

I tested with the particular case, and the comparision down to about 3.