c# smart way to delete multiple occurance of a character in a string

Question

My program reads a file which has thousands of lines of something like this below "Timestamp","LiveStandby","Total1","Total2","Total3", etc.. each line is different What is the best way to split by , and delete the "" as well as put the values in a list

this is what I have

 while ((line = file.ReadLine()) != null)
  {
     List<string> title_list = new List<string>(line.Split(',')); 
  }

the step above still missing the deletion of the quotes. I can do foreach but that kinda defeat the purpose of having List and Split in just 1 line. What is the best and smart way to do it?

Answer 1

The best way in my opinion is to use a library that parses CSV, such as FileHelpers.

Concretely, in your case, this would be the solution using the FileHelpers library:

Define a class that describes the structure of a record:

[DelimitedRecord(",")]
public class MyDataRecord
{
    [FieldQuoted('"')]
    public string TimeStamp;
    [FieldQuoted('"')]
    public string LiveStandby;
    [FieldQuoted('"')]
    public string Total1;
    [FieldQuoted('"')]
    public string Total2;
    [FieldQuoted('"')]
    public string Total3;
}

Use this code to parse the entire file:

var csvEngine = new FileHelperEngine<MyDataRecord>(Encoding.UTF8)
    { 
        Options = { IgnoreFirstLines = 1, IgnoreEmptyLines = true }
    };

var parsedItems = csvEngine.ReadFile(@"D:\myfile.csv");

Please note that this code is for illustration only and I have not compiled/run it. However, the library is pretty straightforward to use and there are good examples and documentation on the website.

Answer 2

Keeping it simple like this should work:

List<string> strings = new List<string>();
while ((line = file.ReadLine()) != null) 
    string.AddRange(line.Replace("\"").split(',').AsEnumerable());