Regular Expressions ~ convert UNC to URL

Question

I'm looking for a nice tight regex solution to this problem. I'm looking to reformat an UNC into a Uri

Problem:

UNC directory needs to be reformatted into a Uri

\\server\d$\x\y\z\AAA

needs to look like:

http://server/z/AAA

Answer 1

I think a replace is easier to write and understand than Regex in this case. Given:

string input = "\\\\server\\d$\\x\\y\\z\\AAA";

You can do a double replace:

string output = String.Format("http:{0}", input.Replace("\\d$\\x\\y", String.Empty).Replace("\\", "/"));

Answer 2

.Net framework supports a class called System.Uri which can do the conversion. It is simpler and handles the escape cases. It handles both UNC, local paths to Uri format.

C#:

Console.WriteLine((new System.Uri("C:\Temp\Test.xml")).AbsoluteUri);

PowerShell:

(New-Object System.Uri 'C:\Temp\Test.xml').AbsoluteUri

Output:

file:///C:/Temp/Test.xml

Answer 3

^(\\\\\w+)\\.*(\\\w\\\w+)$

• First match: \\server

• Second match: \z\AAA

Concatenate to a string and then prepend http: to get http:\\server\z\AAA. Replace \ with /.

Answer 4

Two operations:

• first, replace "(.*)d\$\\x\\y\\(.*)" with "http:\1\2" - that'll clear out the d$\x\y\, and prepend the http:.

• Then replace \\ with / to finish the job.

Job done!

Edit: I'm assuming that in C#, "\1" contains the first parenthesised match (it does in Perl). If it doesn't, then it should be clear what is meant above :)