Is there a better way than String.Replace to remove backspaces from a string?

Question

I have a string read from another source such as "\b\bfoo\bx". In this case, it would translate to the word "fox" as the first 2 \b's are ignored, and the last 'o' is erased, and then replaced with 'x'. Also another case would be "patt\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\bfoo" should be translated to "foo"

I have come up with something using String.Replace, but it is complex and I am worried it is not working correctly, also it is creating a lot of new string objects which I would like to avoid.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Probably the easiest is to just iterate over the entire string. Given your inputs, the following code does the trick in 1-pass

public string ReplaceBackspace(string hasBackspace)
{
    if( string.IsNullOrEmpty(hasBackspace) )
        return hasBackspace;

    StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder(hasBackspace.Length);
    foreach (char c in hasBackspace)
    {
        if (c == '\b')
        {
            if (result.Length > 0)
                result.Length--;
        }
        else
        {
            result.Append(c);
        }
    }
    return result.ToString();
}