Get first 250 words of a string?

Question

How do I get the first 250 words of a string?

Answer 1

yourString.Split(' ').Take(250);

I guess. You should provide more info.

Answer 2

Addition to Tim answer, this is what you can try

IEnumerable<string> words = str.Split().Take(250);
StringBuilder firstwords = new StringBuilder();
foreach(string s in words)
{
   firstwords.Append(s + " ");
}
firstwords.Append("...");
Console.WriteLine(firstwords.ToString());

Answer 3

String.Join(" ", yourstring.Split().Take(250).ToArray())

Answer 4

Try this one:

public string TakeWords(string str,int wordCount)
{
    char lastChar='\0';
    int spaceFound=0;
    var strLen= str.Length;
    int i=0;
    for(; i<strLen; i++)
    {
        if(str[i]==' ' && lastChar!=' ')
        {
            spaceFound++;
        }
        lastChar=str[i];
        if(spaceFound==wordCount)
            break;
    }
    return str.Substring(0,i);
}

Answer 5

It's possible without calling Take().

string[] separatedWords = stringToProcess.Split(new char[] {' '}, 250, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

Which also allows splitting based on more than just space " " and therefore fixes occurrences when spaces are incorrectly missing in input.

string[] separatedWords = stringToProcess.Split(new char[] {' ', '.', ',' ':', ';'}, 250, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

Use StringSplitOptions.None, if you want empty strings to be returned instead.

Answer 6

You need to split the string. You can use the overload without parameter(whitespaces are assumed).

IEnumerable<string> words = str.Split().Take(250);

Note that you need to add using System.Linq for Enumerable.Take.

You can use ToList() or ToArray() ro create a new collection from the query or save memory and enumerate it directly:

foreach(string word in words)
    Console.WriteLine(word);

---

Update

Since it seems to be quite popular I'm adding following extension which is more efficient than the Enumerable.Take approach and also returns a collection instead of the (deferred executed) query.

It uses String.Split where white-space characters are assumed to be the delimiters if the separator parameter is null or contains no characters. But the method also allows to pass different delimiters:

public static string[] GetWords(
       this string input,
       int count = -1,
       string[] wordDelimiter = null,
       StringSplitOptions options = StringSplitOptions.None)
{
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(input)) return new string[] { };

    if(count < 0)
        return input.Split(wordDelimiter, options);

    string[] words = input.Split(wordDelimiter, count + 1, options);
    if (words.Length <= count)
        return words;   // not so many words found

    // remove last "word" since that contains the rest of the string
    Array.Resize(ref words, words.Length - 1);

    return words;
}

It can be used easily:

string str = "A B C   D E F";
string[] words = str.GetWords(5, null, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries); // A,B,C,D,E