I need to insert spaces to string....

Question

Hi All,

I need to insert some spaces to a string "12345678" needs to be "12 34 56 78" I belive there is a String format option to do the serperation but I'm having no luck finding it.

Any one any ideas.
Glenn

[Up Date]
Idea I had while typing this

MessageBox.Show(SerialNumber);

for (int i = 0; i < SerialNumber.Length; i++)

{

SerialNumberNew = SerialNumber.Insert(2," ");

}

almost worked ! almost I can get the space in the first place on the string. the space is moving down the string
MessageBox.Show(SerialNumberNew);

Vulpes · Answer

Yes, if the strings could be long, I'd use a StringBuilder too: string s = "12345678"; StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); for(int i = 0; i { sb.Append(s.Substring(i, 2)); if (i } s = sb.ToString(); Console.WriteLine(s); // 12 34 56 78

Glenn Patton · Answer

Thanks Vulpes, I now have it splitting the string as I would need. My inital worries on using string builder were overcome, face your fears!!! Thanks All Glenn

Vulpes · Answer

Just noticed the edit in your first post where you're trying to use the String.Insert method. The reason why that doesn't work is because each time you insert a space it increases the indices of the following characters by 1. However, you can avoid that by iterating backwards through the string: string s = "12345678"; for(int i = s.Length - 2; i >= 2; i -= 2) s = s.Insert(i, " "); Console.WriteLine(s); // 12 34 56 78 This has the merit of brevity and, whilst it's not as efficient as StringBuilder (a lot of intermediate strings are being created), it should be fine for serial numbers.

Vulpes · Answer

I don't see how that can work, Glen, as you don't have any delimiters in the string "12345678". However, here's another way of doing it which doesn't involve StringBuilder but requires a combination of regular expressions and LINQ: using System.Text.RegularExpressions; using System.Linq; // ... string s = "12345678"; MatchCollection mc = Regex.Matches(s, @"\d\d"); // finds each pair of 2 digits string[] sa = (from Match m in mc select m.Value).ToArray(); s = String.Join(" ", sa); Console.WriteLine(s); // 12 34 56 78 EDIT Just thought of an easier way using regular expressions on their own: string s = "12345678"; s = Regex.Replace(s, @"\d\d", "$0 ").TrimEnd(); Console.WriteLine(s); // 12 34 56 78

Glenn Patton · Answer

I have had mixed results with string build in the past. Some thing like: string Stuff = null; String Builder output = new StringBulider(); int ctr =2; foreach(string subString in Stuff.split(delimeters)) { output.AppendFormat("{0}{1}",ctr++,subString); } Console.WriteLine(output); I hope!! Glenn

Vishnujeet Kumar · Answer

you can use StringBuilder if you don't got any solution .