I am using c# and i have a string like
-Xyz --Xyz ---Xyz -Xyz-Abc --Xyz-Abc i simply want to remove any leading special character until alphabet comes , Note: Special characters in the middle of string will remain same . What is the fastest way to do this?
You could use string.TrimStart and pass in the characters you want to remove:
var result = yourString.TrimStart('-', '_'); However, this is only a good idea if the number of special characters you want to remove is well-known and small.
If that's not the case, you can use regular expressions:
var result = Regex.Replace(yourString, "^[^A-Za-z0-9]*", ""); 
Remove and Substring ?
I prefer this two methods:
List<string> strings = new List<string>() { "-Xyz", "--Xyz", "---Xyz", "-Xyz-Abc", "--Xyz-Abc" }; foreach (var s in strings) { string temp; // String.Trim Method char[] charsToTrim = { '*', ' ', '\'', '-', '_' }; // Add more temp = s.TrimStart(charsToTrim); Console.WriteLine(temp); // Enumerable.SkipWhile Method // Char.IsPunctuation Method (se also Char.IsLetter, Char.IsLetterOrDigit, etc.) temp = new String(s.SkipWhile(x => Char.IsPunctuation(x)).ToArray()); Console.WriteLine(temp); } 