Regular expressions, capture group

Question

This would be the sample text:

<option value="USD">American Samoa, United States Dollar (USD)</option>
<option value="EUR">Andorra, Euro (EUR)</option>
<option value="AOA">Angola, Kwanza (AOA)</option>
<option value="XCD">Anguilla, East Caribbean Dollar (XCD)</option>
<option value="XCD">Antigua and Barbuda, East Caribbean Dollar (XCD)</option>
<option value="ARS">Argentina, Peso (ARS)</option>

This is my try:

<option selected="selected" value="[A-Z]{3}">(?<Test>).+</option>.

The problem is, it only matches the first occurrence it finds. While I want it to get them all. What am I missing in my try?

Answer 1

Regex is not recommended for HTML parsing.

Why don´t you use HTML Agility Pack?

http://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/

Here is an example:

 HtmlDocument doc = new HtmlDocument();
 doc.LoadHtml("YOUR HTML STRING");
 foreach(HtmlNode node in doc.DocumentElement.SelectNodes("//select/option[@selected='selected']")
 {
    string text = node.InnerHtml;                  // "American Samoa, United States Dollar (USD)"
    string value = node.Attributes["value"].Value; // "USD"
 }

You can also download via NuGet =)

If you like this solution, you can read a little bit more about XPath:

http://www.w3schools.com/XPath/xpath_syntax.asp

If you still want to use Regex, you can check this site:

http://www.jslab.dk/tools.regex.php

Answer 2

Are you talking about something like this regex:

<option value=""[A-Z]{3}""[^<]*</option>

Here is a full C# program, see the output at the bottom of the live C# demo.

using System;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
using System.Collections.Specialized;
class Program {
static void Main()    {
string s1 = @"<option value=""USD"">American Samoa, United States Dollar (USD)</option>
<option value=""EUR"">Andorra, Euro (EUR)</option>
<option value=""AOA"">Angola, Kwanza (AOA)</option>
<option value=""XCD"">Anguilla, East Caribbean Dollar (XCD)</option>
<option value=""XCD"">Antigua and Barbuda, East Caribbean Dollar (XCD)</option>
<option value=""ARS"">Argentina, Peso (ARS)</option>";
var myRegex = new Regex(@"<option value=""[A-Z]{3}""[^<]*</option>");
MatchCollection AllMatches = myRegex.Matches(s1);

Console.WriteLine("\n" + "*** Matches ***");
if (AllMatches.Count > 0)    {
    foreach (Match SomeMatch in AllMatches)    {
        Console.WriteLine("Overall Match: " + SomeMatch.Value);
            }
}

Console.WriteLine("\nPress Any Key to Exit.");
Console.ReadKey();
} // END Main
} // END Program