What should I name this Extension method?

Question

I have written an extension method for string manipulation. I'm confused what should I name it - since this will become part of the base library front-end developers in the team will use. Here's the profile of the class member.

Info: Utility Extension method for String types. Overloads of this method may do the same thing characters other than space [with what supplied in argument]
Purpose: Trims down all intermediate or in-between spaces to single space.
Ex:

string Input = "Hello      Token1    Token2     Token3    World!  ";
string Output = Input.TrimSpacesInBetween();
//Output will be: "Hello Token1 Token2 Token3 World!"

I have read [in fact I'm reading] the Framework Design guidelines but this seems to be bothering me.

Some options I think..

TrimIntermediate();  
TrimInbetween();

Here's the code on Request:

It's recursive..

public static class StringExtensions
{
    public static string Collapse(this string str)
    {
        return str.Collapse(' ');
    }

    public static string Collapse(this string str, char delimeter)
    {
        char[] delimeterts = new char[1];
        delimeterts[0] = delimeter;
        str = str.Trim(delimeterts);

        int indexOfFirstDelimeter = str.IndexOf(delimeter);
        int indexTracker = indexOfFirstDelimeter + 1;

        while (str[indexTracker] == delimeter)
            indexTracker++;

        str = str.Remove(indexOfFirstDelimeter + 1, indexTracker - indexOfFirstDelimeter - 1);
        string prevStr = str.Substring(0, indexOfFirstDelimeter + 1);
        string nextPart = str.Substring(indexOfFirstDelimeter + 1);

        if (indexOfFirstDelimeter != -1)
            nextPart = str.Substring(indexOfFirstDelimeter + 1).Collapse(delimeter);

        string retStr = prevStr + nextPart;

        return retStr;
    }
}

By the way, I'm curious, can you post the code of your method? Many years ago I developed one with the same purpose, but I did it like "replace two consecutive spaces into one space while the string contains two consecutive spaces", which I think it is not the most efficient way. — Konamiman
– Konamiman, Commented Oct 28, 2009 at 12:04
I have the feeling that this might be a nice scenario to use Regex.Replace. Find any groups of consecutive spaces with length > 1 and replace it with a single one. Of course you can start by trimming the input, which will get rid of any whitespace pre- or suffixes. — Rob van Groenewoud
– Rob van Groenewoud, Commented Oct 28, 2009 at 12:46
I absolutely have regex implementation as well. This code was written as part of a challenge to solve this recursively. — this. __curious_geek
– this. __curious_geek, Commented Oct 28, 2009 at 13:08
@curious_geek I think this stack-exchange proposal might be of interest to you. If it is show your support and help get it into beta! :) — greatwolf
– greatwolf, Commented Jan 16, 2011 at 23:54

Konamiman · Accepted Answer · 2009-10-28 11:43:45Z

14

What about CollapseSpaces?

answered Oct 28, 2009 at 11:43

Konamiman

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6 Comments

rohancragg Over a year ago

In .Net it's already a convention that Trim refers to removing whitespace so that's maybe an argument in favour of Trim[xxx]()?

rohancragg Over a year ago

Actually I take that back, since Trim removes the whitespace, this requirement is to reduce the count to 1

Konamiman Over a year ago

When I see Trim, I automatically think on removing something from the start or the end, not inbetween. Collapse sounds to me like "make 1 out of N". Anyway I guess it is a matter of taste, and you may be right.

this. __curious_geek Over a year ago

'Collapse' is small, intuitive, relative and also has better recall factor for front-end developers. I'll go with 'collapse' to also include the intuitive reference for overloads. I'm accepting your answer as vote of thanks to originate the idea of 'collapse'. I'll work on my english vocabulary to come up with such namings my own. :) Thanks.

Konamiman Over a year ago

Thank you. This is my most successful answer in SO so far: accepted and the third most voted in just 30 minutes! :-)

|

Jon Skeet · Accepted Answer · 2009-10-28 11:45:42Z

7

CollapseSpaces is good for just spaces, but to allow for the overloads you might want CollapseDelimiters or CollapseWhitespace if it's really just going to be for various whitespace characters.

answered Oct 28, 2009 at 11:45

Jon Skeet

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2 Comments

rohancragg Over a year ago

Collapse what? it seems to vague to me, the developer ideally shouldn't need to read the documentation to find out...

this. __curious_geek Over a year ago

Exactly - I want the developer to intuitively relate the method name with the functionality. Collapse may work just like Trim.

LukeH · Accepted Answer · 2009-10-28 13:00:09Z

Not really an answer, more a comment on your posted code...

You could make the method a lot shorter and more understandable by using a regular expression. (My guess is that it would probably perform better than the recursive string manipulations too, but you would need to benchmark to find out for sure.)

public static class StringExtensions
{
    public static string Collapse(this string str)
    {
        return str.Collapse(' ');
    }

    public static string Collapse(this string str, char delimiter)
    {
        str = str.Trim(delimiter);

        string delim = delimiter.ToString();
        return Regex.Replace(str, Regex.Escape(delim) + "{2,}", delim);
    }
}

David · Accepted Answer · 2009-10-28 11:52:22Z

2

In ruby I believe they call this squeeze

answered Oct 28, 2009 at 11:52

David

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Comments

Rob van Groenewoud · Accepted Answer · 2009-10-28 12:36:48Z

2

NormalizeWhitespace ? This way is more clear that there will be a usable value left after processing. As other have stated earlier, 'Collapse' sounds somewhat rigorous and might even mean that it can return an empty string.

answered Oct 28, 2009 at 12:36

Rob van Groenewoud

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Comments

Rob van Groenewoud · Accepted Answer · 2009-10-28 13:01:30Z

1

Try this, it works for me and seems to be a lot less complicated than a recursive solution...

public static class StringExtensions
{
    public static string NormalizeWhitespace(this string input, char delim)
    {
        return System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(input.Trim(delim), "["+delim+"]{2,}", delim.ToString());
    }
}

It can be called as such:

Console.WriteLine(input.NormalizeWhitespace(' '));

edited Oct 28, 2009 at 13:01

answered Oct 28, 2009 at 12:55

Rob van Groenewoud

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Andriy Volkov · Accepted Answer · 2009-10-28 12:26:29Z

0

CollapseExtraWhitespace

answered Oct 28, 2009 at 12:26

Andriy Volkov

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Florian Doyon · Accepted Answer · 2009-10-28 14:07:07Z

0

PaulaIsBrilliant of course!

answered Oct 28, 2009 at 14:07

Florian Doyon

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fastcodejava · Accepted Answer · 2009-12-27 05:34:57Z

0

How is makeCompact?

answered Dec 27, 2009 at 5:34

fastcodejava

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