Variable numbers of groups with Regular Expressions

Question

I have a stream of data that I need to parse. The stream is sent line by line and takes the form:

ID: XXX  Data: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX

where the X's are hex characters, ie:

ID: 1F9  Data: AC 12 53 8F 14 11 FF 00 -> For example

The trick is that there are not always 8 data bytes, so any of these transmissions are also possible:

ID: XXX  Data: XX
ID: XXX  Data: XX XX
ID: XXX  Data: XX XX XX 
ID: XXX  Data: XX XX XX XX 
ID: XXX  Data: XX XX XX XX XX 
ID: XXX  Data: XX XX XX XX XX XX 
ID: XXX  Data: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX 
ID: XXX  Data: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX

I want to write a regular expression that can parse out the ID and the available data bytes from each transmission. I then need to store the bytes in an array to assign to a dataGridView.

How would the pattern be written to accomplish this? Is there a better way to assign the values to a row in a dataGridView than assigning to an array? Execution time needs to be optimized.

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can use the code below. It first splits the input string and then selects the values into proper variables:

Note: you can use split variable directly, you ID is in index 1 and values start at 2. Ignore the first element as it contains an empty string.

String input = "ID: 1F9  Data: AC 12 53 8F 14 11 FF 00";
String pattern = @"ID:\s|\s\sData:\s|\s";

string[] split = Regex.Split(input, pattern);
string id = split[1]; // the first elements contains "" so ignore it
string[] values = new string[split.Length - 2];
for (int i = 2; i < split.Length; i++)
    values[i - 2] = split[i];