Vb.net find and replace within paragraph - vb.net

Question

What would be the efficient way to read a paragraph, and replace anything between square brackets []? In my case following paragraph,
I agree to [Terms of Use|https://www.google.com/terms-use], [Privacy Statement|https://www.google.com/privacy-statement] and [Misc Term|https://www.google.com/misc-terms]
should parsed as,
I agree to Terms of Use, Privacy Statement and Misc Term

Answer 1

You can use the following regular expression pattern to match the brackets:
\[[^]]+]
This is what the pattern means:
\[ match an open bracket
[^]]+ match anything but a closed bracket one or more times
] match a closed bracket
Here is an example fiddle: https://regex101.com/r/Iyk9kR/1
Once you have the matches, you would:
Use Regex.Replace (documentation)
Use the MatchEvaluator overload
In the MatchEvaluator, use String.Split (documentation) on the pipe character
Dynamically build your anchor tag by setting the href attribute to the second match of the split and the innerHTML to the first match of the split
It might be worth adding some conditional checking in between steps 2 and 3, but I'm not sure of your exact requirements.
Here is an example:
Imports System
Imports System.Text.RegularExpressions
Public Module Module1
Public Sub Main()
Dim literal = "I agree to [Terms of Use|https://www.google.com/terms-use], [Privacy Statement|https://www.google.com/privacy-statement] and [Misc Term|https://www.google.com/misc-terms]"
Dim regexPattern = "\[[^]]+]"
Dim massagedLiteral = Regex.Replace(literal, regexPattern, AddressOf ConvertToAnchor)
Console.WriteLine(massagedLiteral)
End Sub
Private Function ConvertToAnchor(m As Match) As String
Dim matches = m.Value.Split("|"c)
Return "" & matches(0).Substring(1) & ""
End Function
End Module
Fiddle: https://dotnetfiddle.net/xUE8St

Answer 2

Dim rtnStr = "String goes here"
Dim pattern As String = "\[.*?\]"
If Regex.IsMatch(rtnStr, pattern) Then
Dim matches = Regex.Matches(rtnStr, pattern, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase)
For index As Integer = 0 To matches.Count - 1
If matches(index).ToString().Contains("|") Then
Dim splitBracket = matches(index).ToString().Split("|")
Dim linkName = String.Empty
Dim linkUrl = String.Empty
If splitBracket.Length > 0 Then
linkName = splitBracket(0).Replace("[", "")
linkUrl = splitBracket(1).Replace("]", "")
End If
Dim linkHtml = "<a class=""terms"" href=""javascript: void(0);"" data-url=" + linkUrl + ">" + linkName + "</a>"
rtnStr = rtnStr.Replace(matches(index).ToString(), linkHtml)
End If
Next
End If
#Html.Raw(rtnStr)