Add spaces before Capital Letters

Question

The regexes will work fine (I even voted up Martin Browns answer), but they are expensive (and personally I find any pattern longer than a couple of characters prohibitively obtuse)

This function

string AddSpacesToSentence(string text, bool preserveAcronyms)
{
        if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(text))
           return string.Empty;
        StringBuilder newText = new StringBuilder(text.Length * 2);
        newText.Append(text[0]);
        for (int i = 1; i < text.Length; i++)
        {
            if (char.IsUpper(text[i]))
                if ((text[i - 1] != ' ' && !char.IsUpper(text[i - 1])) ||
                    (preserveAcronyms && char.IsUpper(text[i - 1]) && 
                     i < text.Length - 1 && !char.IsUpper(text[i + 1])))
                    newText.Append(' ');
            newText.Append(text[i]);
        }
        return newText.ToString();
}

Will do it 100,000 times in 2,968,750 ticks, the regex will take 25,000,000 ticks (and thats with the regex compiled).

It's better, for a given value of better (i.e. faster) however it's more code to maintain. "Better" is often compromise of competing requirements.

Hope this helps :)

Update
It's a good long while since I looked at this, and I just realised the timings haven't been updated since the code changed (it only changed a little).

On a string with 'Abbbbbbbbb' repeated 100 times (i.e. 1,000 bytes), a run of 100,000 conversions takes the hand coded function 4,517,177 ticks, and the Regex below takes 59,435,719 making the Hand coded function run in 7.6% of the time it takes the Regex.

Update 2 Will it take Acronyms into account? It will now! The logic of the if statment is fairly obscure, as you can see expanding it to this ...

if (char.IsUpper(text[i]))
    if (char.IsUpper(text[i - 1]))
        if (preserveAcronyms && i < text.Length - 1 && !char.IsUpper(text[i + 1]))
            newText.Append(' ');
        else ;
    else if (text[i - 1] != ' ')
        newText.Append(' ');

... doesn't help at all!

Here's the original simple method that doesn't worry about Acronyms

string AddSpacesToSentence(string text)
{
        if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(text))
           return "";
        StringBuilder newText = new StringBuilder(text.Length * 2);
        newText.Append(text[0]);
        for (int i = 1; i < text.Length; i++)
        {
            if (char.IsUpper(text[i]) && text[i - 1] != ' ')
                newText.Append(' ');
            newText.Append(text[i]);
        }
        return newText.ToString();
}

Your solution has an issue in that it puts a space before the first letter T so you get

" This String..." instead of "This String..."

To get around this look for the lower case letter preceding it as well and then insert the space in the middle:

newValue = Regex.Replace(value, "([a-z])([A-Z])", "$1 $2");

Edit 1:

If you use @"(\p{Ll})(\p{Lu})" it will pick up accented characters as well.

Edit 2:

If your strings can contain acronyms you may want to use this:

newValue = Regex.Replace(value, @"((?<=\p{Ll})\p{Lu})|((?!\A)\p{Lu}(?>\p{Ll}))", " $0");

So "DriveIsSCSICompatible" becomes "Drive Is SCSI Compatible"

Didn't test performance, but here in one line with linq:

var val = "ThisIsAStringToTest";
val = string.Concat(val.Select(x => Char.IsUpper(x) ? " " + x : x.ToString())).TrimStart(' ');

I know this is an old one, but this is an extension I use when I need to do this:

public static class Extensions
{
    public static string ToSentence( this string Input )
    {
        return new string(Input.SelectMany((c, i) => i > 0 && char.IsUpper(c) ? new[] { ' ', c } : new[] { c }).ToArray());
    }
}

This will allow you to use MyCasedString.ToSentence()

I set out to make a simple extension method based on Binary Worrier's code which will handle acronyms properly, and is repeatable (won't mangle already spaced words). Here is my result.

public static string UnPascalCase(this string text)
{
    if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(text))
        return "";
    var newText = new StringBuilder(text.Length * 2);
    newText.Append(text[0]);
    for (int i = 1; i < text.Length; i++)
    {
        var currentUpper = char.IsUpper(text[i]);
        var prevUpper = char.IsUpper(text[i - 1]);
        var nextUpper = (text.Length > i + 1) ? char.IsUpper(text[i + 1]) || char.IsWhiteSpace(text[i + 1]): prevUpper;
        var spaceExists = char.IsWhiteSpace(text[i - 1]);
        if (currentUpper && !spaceExists && (!nextUpper || !prevUpper))
                newText.Append(' ');
        newText.Append(text[i]);
    }
    return newText.ToString();
}

Here are the unit test cases this function passes. I added most of tchrist's suggested cases to this list. The three of those it doesn't pass (two are just Roman numerals) are commented out:

Assert.AreEqual("For You And I", "ForYouAndI".UnPascalCase());
Assert.AreEqual("For You And The FBI", "ForYouAndTheFBI".UnPascalCase());
Assert.AreEqual("A Man A Plan A Canal Panama", "AManAPlanACanalPanama".UnPascalCase());
Assert.AreEqual("DNS Server", "DNSServer".UnPascalCase());
Assert.AreEqual("For You And I", "For You And I".UnPascalCase());
Assert.AreEqual("Mount Mᶜ Kinley National Park", "MountMᶜKinleyNationalPark".UnPascalCase());
Assert.AreEqual("El Álamo Tejano", "ElÁlamoTejano".UnPascalCase());
Assert.AreEqual("The Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason", "TheÆvarArnfjörðBjarmason".UnPascalCase());
Assert.AreEqual("Il Caffè Macchiato", "IlCaffèMacchiato".UnPascalCase());
//Assert.AreEqual("Mister Dženan Ljubović", "MisterDženanLjubović".UnPascalCase());
//Assert.AreEqual("Ole King Henry Ⅷ", "OleKingHenryⅧ".UnPascalCase());
//Assert.AreEqual("Carlos Ⅴº El Emperador", "CarlosⅤºElEmperador".UnPascalCase());
Assert.AreEqual("For You And The FBI", "For You And The FBI".UnPascalCase());
Assert.AreEqual("A Man A Plan A Canal Panama", "A Man A Plan A Canal Panama".UnPascalCase());
Assert.AreEqual("DNS Server", "DNS Server".UnPascalCase());
Assert.AreEqual("Mount Mᶜ Kinley National Park", "Mount Mᶜ Kinley National Park".UnPascalCase());