Why am I not getting all my regex captures?

Question

I am using .NET's Regex to capture information from a string. I have a pattern of numbers enclosed in bar characters, and I want to pick out the numbers. Here's my code:

string testStr = "|12||13||14|";
var testMatch = Regex.Match(testStr, @"^(?:\|([0-9]+)\|)+$");

However, testMatch.Captures only has 1 entry, which is equal to the whole string. Why doesn't it have 3 entries, 12, 13, and 14? What am I missing?

Answer 1

You want to use the Captures property on the Group itself - in this case testMatch.Groups[1]. This is needed since there could be multiple capture groups in the regex, and there would be no way for it to know which one you are referring to.

Using testMatch.Captures effectively gives testMatch.Groups[0].Captures.

This works for me:

string testStr = "|12||13||14|";
var testMatch = Regex.Match(testStr, @"^(?:\|([0-9]+)\|)+$");

int captureCtr = 0;
foreach (Capture capture in testMatch.Groups[1].Captures) 
{
    Console.WriteLine("Capture {0}: {1}", captureCtr++, capture.Value);
}

Reference: Group.Captures