Text Mask c#

Question

I need to validate a certain property to one of my classes. When I set the property, the class should validate the input and if incorrect, set the object to an invalid state.

Question : The property value must be in a certain mask/format eg. &&&&-&&&&-&&&&. I cannot use regular expressions. Is it possible to validate text against a mask value ?

Thanks

Answer 1

Regular expressions are often over-used, but this is a pretty good example of when a regex is ideal... so: why can't you use them here?

Answer 2

Is it possible to validate text against a mask value ?

Of course it's possible, in that you could write a function to take a string and a mask and check one against another.

So I'm unclear on what you're asking - are you asking if there are functions in the standard .Net libraries to do this? Or asking for an implementation of a mask-validation function? Or something else?

If you're looking for something in the library to help, MaskedTextProvider would probably do it, although it's overkill.

Answer 3

Without regexp you have to write your own validation code, which checks the mask.