How to: Find Words with Specific Number of Characters

• Sep 19, 2023

This example demonstrates how to use regular expressions to find words with specific number of characters (6 in this example). Call the SubDocument.FindAll method to perform the search.

C#

Document document = wordProcessor.Document;
document.LoadDocument("Grimm.docx");
document.InsertSection(document.Range.Start);

//Specify a regular expression that will find all six letter words.
System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex expr = new System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex("\\b\\w{6}\\b");
System.Collections.Specialized.StringCollection sixLetterWords = new System.Collections.Specialized.StringCollection();

//Perform the search.
DocumentRange[] found = document.FindAll(expr);
foreach (DocumentRange r in found)
{
  sixLetterWords.Add(document.GetText(r));
}
document.BeginUpdate();

//Insert an ordered list of non-repetitive words in the beginning of the document.
var distinctWords = sixLetterWords.Cast<string>().Distinct().OrderByDescending(s => s);
foreach (var s in distinctWords)
{
  document.InsertText(document.Range.Start, s.ToString() + Environment.NewLine);
}
document.EndUpdate();

VB.NET

Private Sub SurroundingSub()
Dim document As Document = wordProcessor.Document
document.LoadDocument("Grimm.docx")
document.InsertSection(document.Range.Start)

'Specify a regular expression that will find all six letter words. 
Dim expr As System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex = New System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex("\b\w{6}\b")
Dim sixLetterWords As System.Collections.Specialized.StringCollection = New System.Collections.Specialized.StringCollection()

'Perform the search. 
Dim found As DocumentRange() = document.FindAll(expr)
For Each r As DocumentRange In found
    sixLetterWords.Add(document.GetText(r))
Next

document.BeginUpdate()

'Insert an ordered list of non-repetitive words in the beginning of the document.
Dim distinctWords = sixLetterWords.Cast(Of String)().Distinct().OrderByDescending(Function(s) s)
For Each s In distinctWords
  document.InsertText(document.Range.Start, s.ToString() + Environment.NewLine)
Next
document.EndUpdate()
End Sub