Parsing SVG “path” elements with C# – are there libraries out there to do this? [closed]

I don’t know of specific libraries in c#, however you could start by parsing this kind of structure like this:

string path = "M5.4,3.806h6.336v43.276h20.738v5.256H5.4V3.806z";
string separators = @"(?=[MZLHVCSQTAmzlhvcsqta])"; // these letters are valid SVG
                             // commands. Whenever we find one, a new command is 
                             // starting. Let's split the string there.
var tokens = Regex.Split(path, separators).Where(t => !string.IsNullOrEmpty(t));

now you have a list of commands followed by their arguments. You could then proceed to split the arguments in the same way.

You said the arguments can be separated by a space, a comma or a minus sign (which,unlike the comma and the whitespace, should remain part of the arguments), so you can use another simple regex (note that I’m no fan of regular expressions, but in this case I think they add to readability).

string argSeparators = @"[\s,]|(?=-)"; // discard whitespace and comma but keep the -
var splitArgs = Regex
   .Split(remainingargs, argSeparators)
   .Where(t => !string.IsNullOrEmpty(t)); 

I would wrap this in a SVGCommand class, like this

class SVGCommand
{
    public char command {get; private set;}
    public float[] arguments {get; private set;}

    public SVGCommand(char command, params float[] arguments)
    {
        this.command=command;
        this.arguments=arguments;
    }

    public static SVGCommand Parse(string SVGpathstring)
    {
        var cmd = SVGpathstring.Take(1).Single();
        string remainingargs = SVGpathstring.Substring(1);

        string argSeparators = @"[\s,]|(?=-)";
        var splitArgs = Regex
            .Split(remainingargs, argSeparators)
            .Where(t => !string.IsNullOrEmpty(t));

        float[] floatArgs = splitArgs.Select(arg => float.Parse(arg)).ToArray();
        return new SVGCommand(cmd,floatArgs);
    }
}

Now a simple “interpreter” could look something like this:

    string path = "M70.491,50.826c-2.232,1.152-6.913,2.304-12.817,2.304c-13.682,0-23.906-8.641-23.906-24.626" +
"c0-15.266,10.297-25.49,25.346-25.49c5.977,0,9.865,1.296,11.521,2.16l-1.584,5.112C66.747,9.134,63.363,8.27,59.33,8.27" +
"c-11.377,0-18.938,7.272-18.938,20.018c0,11.953,6.841,19.514,18.578,19.514c3.888,0,7.777-0.792,10.297-2.016L70.491,50.826z";
    string separators = @"(?=[A-Za-z])";
    var tokens = Regex.Split(path, separators).Where(t => !string.IsNullOrEmpty(t));

    // our "interpreter". Runs the list of commands and does something for each of them.
    foreach (string token in tokens){
                    // note that Parse could throw an exception
                    // if the path is not correct 
        SVGCommand c = SVGCommand.Parse(token);
        Console.WriteLine("doing something with command {0}", c.command);
    }

If you need to do something more sophisticated, F# is probably better suited for the job (and is interoperable with C#). I’m not suggesting to learn F# just for this specific task, I just thought I’d mention it, in case you are already looking into it for something else.