Replace "\\" with "\" in a string in C#

I suspect your string already actually only contains a single backslash, but you're looking at it in the debugger which is escaping it for you into a form which would be valid as a regular string literal in C#.

If print it out in the console, or in a message box, does it show with two backslashes or one?

If you actually want to replace a double backslash with a single one, it's easy to do so:

text = text.Replace(@"\\", @"\");

... but my guess is that the original doesn't contain a double backslash anyway. If this doesn't help, please give more details.

EDIT: In response to the edited question, your stringToBeReplaced only has a single backslash in. Really. Wherever you're seeing two backslashes, that viewer is escaping it. The string itself doesn't have two backslashes. Examine stringToBeReplaced.Length and count the characters.


in case someone got stuck with this and none of the answers above worked, below is what worked for me. Hope it helps.

var oldString = "\\r|\\n";

// None of these worked for me
// var newString = oldString(@"\\", @"\");
// var newString = oldString.Replace("\\\\", "\\");
// var newString = oldString.Replace("\\u5b89", "\u5b89");
// var newString = Regex.Replace(oldString , @"\\", @"\");

// This is what worked
var newString = Regex.Unescape(oldString);
// newString is now "\r|\n"

I tried the procedures of your posts but with no success.

This is what I get from debugger: enter image description here

Original string that I save into sqlite database was b\r\na .. when I read them, I get b\\r\\na (length in debugger is 6: "b" "\" "\r" "\" "\n" "a") then I try replace this string and I get string with length 6 again (you can see in picture above).

I run this short script in my test form with only one text box:

private void Form_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        string x = "b\\r\\na";
        string y = x.Replace(@"\\", @"\");
        this.textBox.Text = y + "\r\n\r\nLength: " + y.Length.ToString();
    }

and I get this in text box (so, no new line characters between "b" and "a":

b\r\na

Length: 6

What can I do with this string to unescape backslash? (I expect new line between "b" and "a".)

Solution:

OK, this is not possible to do with standard replace, because of \r and \n is one character. Is possible to replace part of string character by character but not possible to replace "half part" of one character. So, I must replace any special character separatelly, like this:

private void Form_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) {
    ...
    string z = x.Replace(@"\r\n", Environment.NewLine);
    ...

This produce correct result for me:

b
a

Tags:

C#

String

Replace

Backslash

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