I am working with C# and .NET. The strings I am looking at have are text, possibly with numbers in various places and an optional final question mark.
If there is a number at the end of the string or before the question mark I need to capture it, parse it, and then remove it from the string. Here is my code:

Match trailingNumber = Regex.Match(command, @"\d+(?:\??)$");
if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(trailingNumber.Value) && int.TryParse(trailingNumber.Value, out index))
    command = Regex.Replace(command, @"\d+(\??)$", "$1");

The problem is that the non-capturing group is capturing the '?' in a string such as "3abc99?" causing the match to be "99?" instead of "99". In the replace command I am able to deal with this but how can I prevent the initial match from including the question mark?
Thanks!

Please provide some sample content and show what you would like to match within that content.

---

I think you are confusing the terminology of "capturing" with the idea of a regex matching. Everything that can be matched is returned the match. Capturing and non-capturing groups have no effect on that. For an overview on using grouping http://regexadvice.com/blogs/mash/archive/2007/06/01/You_2700_ve-got-your-sub_2D00_matches-in-my-matches.aspx

---

Michael

"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not."
Albert Einstein

ddrudik - The sample content is there: input "3abc99?" or "3abc99", desired output "99".

mash - Thanks, that is exactly what the problem was - I should have been using Regex.Matches instead of Regex.Match, and then looked at the groups. The revised code that works is:

MatchCollection trailingNumbers = Regex.Matches(command, @"(\d+)(?:\??)$");    // only capture the number
if (trailingNumbers.Count>0) {
    int.TryParse(trailingNumbers[0].Groups[ 1 ].Value, out index);
    command = Regex.Replace(command, @"\d+(\??)$", "$1");
}