Send special character with SendKeys

c# regex keyboard character sendkeys
Swag picture Swag · Aug 18, 2013 · Viewed 11.4k times · Source

I am using textboxes to send text via SendKeys, but when I insert special characters in the textbox, my application crashes. For example, when I put in a '+' in the textbox, I get this error: SendKeys string '+' is not valid.

I need a solution to send special characters with SendKeys, this is a part of my code:

SendKeys.Send(dropDownEffectsLeft1.SelectedItem.ToString() + dropDownEffectsRight1.SelectedItem.ToString() + txt1.Text);

It's all about the textbox called txt1

I think I need something like a Regex to check if my txt contains any special characters, and that I will do with:

Regex specialChar = new Regex(@"^[[email protected]]*$");

I really appreciate your help.

Answer

Daniel Gimenez picture Daniel Gimenez · Aug 18, 2013

From MSDN SendKeys:

The plus sign (+), caret (^), percent sign (%), tilde (~), and parentheses () have special meanings to SendKeys. To specify one of these characters, enclose it within braces ({}). For example, to specify the plus sign, use "{+}". To specify brace characters, use "{{}" and "{}}". Brackets ([ ]) have no special meaning to SendKeys, but you must enclose them in braces. In other applications, brackets do have a special meaning that might be significant when dynamic data exchange (DDE) occurs.

Code

So you just need a regex to replace those characters:

string txt = Regex.Replace(txt1.Text, "[+^%~()]", "{$0}");
SendKeys.Send(txt);

Test

I tested the code and I have an online test you can check out for the regex [+^%~()]

  • Input: Plus + Caret ^ Percent % Tilde ~ Parenthis ( )
  • Output Plus {+} Caret {^} Percent {%} Tilde {~} Parenthis {(} {)}

Related questions

Regular expression to check if password is "8 characters including 1 uppercase letter, 1 special character, alphanumeric characters"

I want a regular expression to check that a password must be eight characters including one uppercase letter, one special character and alphanumeric characters. And here is my validation expression which is for eight characters including one uppercase letter, one …

Read More
Regex that accepts only numbers (0-9) and NO characters

I need a regex that will accept only digits from 0-9 and nothing else. No letters, no characters. I thought this would work: ^[0-9] or even \d+ but these are accepting the characters : ^,$,(,), etc I thought that both the regexes …

Read More
Regex for numbers only

I haven't used regular expressions at all, so I'm having difficulty troubleshooting. I want the regex to match only when the contained string is all numbers; but with the two examples below it is matching a string that contains all …

Read More