 <p>The format sounds like a good solution.<br> Perhaps a (few) nice regular expression(s) to cut your input variable into groups.</p> <p>I would try to use as many existing formats if you can:<br> <a href="http://blog.stevex.net/string-formatting-in-csharp/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://blog.stevex.net/string-formatting-in-csharp/</a></p>