Grab first 4 characters of two words RegEx - regex

Question

I would like to grab the first 4 characters of two words using RegEx. I have some RegEx experinece however a search did not yeild any results.
So if I have Awesome Sauce I would like the end result to be AwesSauc

Answer 1

Use the Replace Text action with the following parameters:
Pattern: \W*\b(\p{L}{1,4})\w*\W*
Replacement text: $1
See the regex demo.
Pattern details:
\W* - 0+ non-word chars (trim from the left)
\b - a leading word boundary
(\p{L}{1,4}) - Group 1 (later referred to via $1 backreference) matching any 1 to 4 letters (incl. Unicode ones)
\w* - any 0+ word chars (to match the rest of the word)
\W* - 0+ non-word chars (trim from the right)

Answer 2

I think this RegEx should do the job
string pattern = #"\b\w{4}";
var text = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog";
Regex regex = new Regex(pattern);
var match = regex.Match(text);
while (match.Captures.Count != 0)
{
foreach (var capture in match.Captures)
{
Console.WriteLine(capture);
}
match = match.NextMatch();
}
// outputs:
// quic
// brow
// jump
// over
// lazy
Alternatively you could use patterns like:
\b\w{1,4} => The, quic, brow, fox, jump, over, the, lazy, dog
\b[\w|\d]{1,4} => would also match digits
Update:
added a full example for C# and modified the pattern slightly. Also added some alternative patterns.

Answer 3

one approach with Linq
var res = new string(input.Split().SelectMany((x => x.Where((y, i) => i < 4))).ToArray());

Answer 4

Try this expression
\b[a-zA-Z0-9]{1,4}

Answer 5

Using regex would in fact be more complex and totally unnecessary for this case. Just do it as either of the below.
var sentence = "Awesome Sau";
// With LINQ
var linqWay = string.Join("", sentence.Split(" ".ToCharArray(), options:StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries).Select(x => x.Substring(0, Math.Min(4,x.Length))).ToArray());
// Without LINQ
var oldWay = new StringBuilder();
string[] words = sentence.Split(" ".ToCharArray(), options:StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
foreach(var word in words) {
oldWay.Append(word.Substring(0, Math.Min(4, word.Length)));
}
Edit:
Updated code based on #Dai's comment. Math.Min check borrowed as is from his suggestion.