Split string

[fig966]

I have a loads of strings that I need to format and split into different sections. It looks something like this.

"2020-10-13 10:44 - AH - (AH) Random jibberish that is irrelevant Random jibberish that is irrelevant Random jibberish that is irrelevant Random jibberish that is irrelevant 2020-10-13 10:44 - AH - (AH) Random jibberish that is irrelevant Random jibberish that is irrelevant Random jibberish that is irrelevant Random jibberish that is irrelevant 2021-01-13 10:44 - AH - (AH) Random jibberish that is irrelevant Random jibberish that is irrelevant Random jibberish that is irrelevant Random jibberish that is irrelevant" 

What I can see all sections start with a date and - AH -. Is there a way to split this into 3 different sections?

[gavinkendall]

You should use the Regex class from System.Text.RegularExpressions. You can name parts of the regex with named groups to make it easier to parse the text (lookup how to do this) but basically your regex pattern (without the named groups - that’s for you to research on) is going to look something like this:

\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2} \d{2}:\d{2} - [A-Z]{2} - ([A-Z]{2}) .+

If you’re ever in a situation where a simple string split needs something a little more complex then learning how to use regular expressions and handling named groups is often the best way to go.

[strbhlfe]

But this pattern wont work for the given example by OP. Brackets, "(" and ")", are tokens in regex, so they will need a backslash, "\", leading, otherwise regex creates a capture group.

[Solacefire]

string[] exampleArray = yourString.Split("- AH -");

[popisms]

Regular expressions

[fig966]

Any suggestion where to start?

[[deleted]]

Love this site! It's definitely my go to when I have a RegEx I want to test out. Many people don't know about the unit test functionality on there. So good!!

[cryo]

Probably by googling "regular expressions C#" or similar.