GroupCollection Class
Returns the set of captured groups in a single match.
Namespace: System.Text.RegularExpressions
Assembly: System (in System.dll)
Syntax
System.Object
System.Text.RegularExpressions.GroupCollection
Any public static (Shared in Visual Basic) members of this type are thread safe. Any instance members are not guaranteed to be thread safe.
Remarks
The collection is immutable (read-only) and has no public constructor. A GroupCollection object is returned by the Match.Groups property.
The collection contains one or more System.Text.RegularExpressions.Group objects. If the match is successful, the first element in the collection contains the Group object that corresponds to the entire match. Each subsequent element represents a captured group, if the regular expression includes capturing groups. If the match is unsuccessful, the collection contains a single System.Text.RegularExpressions.Group object whose Success property is falseand whose Value property equals String.Empty.
To iterate through the members of the collection, you should use the collection iteration construct provided by your language (such as foreach in C# and For Each…Next in Visual Basic) instead of retrieving the enumerator that is returned by the GetEnumerator method.
The following example uses a regular expression with capturing groups to extract information about trademarks and registered trademarks used in text. The regular expression pattern is /b(/w+?)([/u00AE/u2122]), which is interpreted as shown in the following table.
For each match, the GroupCollection contains three Group objects. The first object contains the string that matches the entire regular expression. The second object, which represents the first captured group, contains the product name. The third object, which represents the second captured group, contains the trademark or registered trademark symbol.
The example displays the following output:
Pattern | Description |
---|---|
/b | Look for a word boundary. |
(/w+?) | Look for one or more word characters. Together, these form the trademarked name. (Note that this regular expression assumes that a trademark consists of a single word.) This is the first capturing group. |
([/u00AE/u2122]) | Look for either the ® or the ™ character. This is the second capturing group. |
Examples
Thread Safety
Inheritance Hierarchy