How can I strip punctuation from a string?

Question

For the hope-to-have-an-answer-in-30-seconds part of this question, I\'m specifically looking for C#

But in the general case, what\'s the best way to strip punctuati

Answer 1

Why not simply:

string s = "sxrdct?fvzguh,bij.";
var sb = new StringBuilder();

foreach (char c in s)
{
   if (!char.IsPunctuation(c))
      sb.Append(c);
}

s = sb.ToString();

The usage of RegEx is normally slower than simple char operations. And those LINQ operations look like overkill to me. And you can't use such code in .NET 2.0...

Answer 2

Describes intent, easiest to read (IMHO) and best performing:

 s = s.StripPunctuation();

to implement:

public static class StringExtension
{
    public static string StripPunctuation(this string s)
    {
        var sb = new StringBuilder();
        foreach (char c in s)
        {
            if (!char.IsPunctuation(c))
                sb.Append(c);
        }
        return sb.ToString();
    }
}

This is using Hades32's algorithm which was the best performing of the bunch posted.

Answer 3

You can use the regex.replace method:

 replace(YourString, RegularExpressionWithPunctuationMarks, Empty String)

Since this returns a string, your method will look something like this:

 string s = Regex.Replace("Hello!?!?!?!", "[?!]", "");

You can replace "[?!]" with something more sophiticated if you want:

(\p{P})

This should find any punctuation.

Answer 4

Here's a slightly different approach using linq. I like AviewAnew's but this avoids the Aggregate

        string myStr = "Hello there..';,]';';., Get rid of Punction";

        var s = from ch in myStr
                where !Char.IsPunctuation(ch)
                select ch;

        var bytes = UnicodeEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes(s.ToArray());
        var stringResult = UnicodeEncoding.ASCII.GetString(bytes);

Answer 5

This thread is so old, but I'd be remiss not to post a more elegant (IMO) solution.

string inputSansPunc = input.Where(c => !char.IsPunctuation(c)).Aggregate("", (current, c) => current + c);

It's LINQ sans WTF.

Answer 6

The most braindead simple way of doing it would be using string.replace

The other way I would imagine is a regex.replace and have your regular expression with all the appropriate punctuation marks in it.