11/16/24, 10:57 PM C# in a Nutshell - Code Listings

Chapter 6 - .NET Fundamentals

String and Text Handling
Char

// char literals:
char c = 'A';
char newLine = '\n';

// System.Char defines a range of static methods for working with characters:

Console.WriteLine (char.ToUpper ('c')); // C
Console.WriteLine (char.IsWhiteSpace ('\t')); // True
Console.WriteLine (char.IsLetter ('x')); // True
Console.WriteLine (char.GetUnicodeCategory ('x')); // LowercaseLetter

ToUpper & ToLower - and the Turkey bug

// ToUpper and ToLower honor the end-user’s locale, which can lead to subtle bugs.
// This applies to both char and string.

// To illustrate, let's pretend we live in Turkey:

Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo ("tr-TR");

// The following expression evaluates to false:

Console.WriteLine (char.ToUpper ('i') == 'I');

// Let's see why:

Console.WriteLine (char.ToUpper ('i')); // İ

// In contrast, the *Invariant methods always apply the same culture:

Console.WriteLine (char.ToUpperInvariant ('i')); // I
Console.WriteLine (char.ToUpperInvariant ('i') == 'I'); // True

Constructing strings

// String literals:
string s1 = "Hello";
string s2 = "First Line\r\nSecond Line";
string s3 = @"\\server\fileshare\helloworld.cs";

// To create a repeating sequence of characters you can use string’s constructor:

Console.Write (new string ('*', 10)); // **********

// You can also construct a string from a char array. ToCharArray does the reverse:
char[] ca = "Hello".ToCharArray();
string s = new string (ca); // s = "Hello"
s.Dump();

Null and Empty Strings

// An empty string has a length of zero:

string empty = "";
Console.WriteLine (empty == ""); // True
Console.WriteLine (empty == string.Empty); // True
Console.WriteLine (empty.Length == 0); // True

//Because strings are reference types, they can also be null:

string nullString = null;
Console.WriteLine (nullString == null); // True
Console.WriteLine (nullString == ""); // False
Console.WriteLine (string.IsNullOrEmpty (nullString)); // True
Console.WriteLine (nullString.Length == 0); // NullReferenceException

Accessing Characaters within a string

string str = "abcde";

char letter = str[1]; // letter == 'b'

// string also implements IEnumerable<char>, so you can foreach over its characters:
foreach (char c in "123") Console.Write (c + ","); // 1,2,3,

Searching within strings

// The simplest search methods are Contains, StartsWith, and EndsWith:

Console.WriteLine ("quick brown fox".Contains ("brown")); // True
Console.WriteLine ("quick brown fox".EndsWith ("fox")); // True

// IndexOf returns the first position of a given character or substring:

Console.WriteLine ("abcde".IndexOf ("cd")); // 2
Console.WriteLine ("abcde".IndexOf ("xx")); // -1

// IndexOf is overloaded to accept a startPosition StringComparison enum, which enables case-insensitive searches:
Console.WriteLine ("abcde".IndexOf ("CD", StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase)); // 2

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// LastIndexOf is like IndexOf, but works backward through the string.
// IndexOfAny returns the first matching position of any one of a set of characters:
Console.WriteLine ("ab,cd ef".IndexOfAny (new char[] {' ', ','} )); // 2
Console.WriteLine ("pas5w0rd".IndexOfAny ("0123456789".ToCharArray() )); // 3

// LastIndexOfAny does the same in the reverse direction.

Manipulating strings

// Because String is immutable, all the methods below return a new string, leaving the original untouched.

// Substring extracts a portion of a string:

string left3 = "12345".Substring (0, 3); // left3 = "123";
string mid3 = "12345".Substring (1, 3); // mid3 = "234";

// If you omit the length, you get the remainder of the string:
string end3 = "12345".Substring (2); // end3 = "345";

// Insert and Remove insert or remove characters at a specified position:

string s1 = "helloworld".Insert (5, ", "); // s1 = "hello, world"
string s2 = s1.Remove (5, 2); // s2 = "helloworld";

// PadLeft and PadRight pad a string to a given length with a specified character (or a space if unspecified):
Console.WriteLine ("12345".PadLeft (9, '*')); // ****12345
Console.WriteLine ("12345".PadLeft (9)); // 12345

// TrimStart, TrimEnd and Trim remove specified characters (whitespace, by default) from the string:
Console.WriteLine (" abc \t\r\n ".Trim().Length); // 3

// Replace replaces all occurrences of a particular character or substring:

Console.WriteLine ("to be done".Replace (" ", " | ") ); // to | be | done
Console.WriteLine ("to be done".Replace (" ", "") ); // tobedone

Splitting & Joining strings

// Split takes a sentence and returns an array of words (default delimiters = whitespace):
string[] words = "The quick brown fox".Split();
words.Dump();

// The static Join method does the reverse of Split:

string together = string.Join (" ", words);
together.Dump(); // The quick brown fox

// The static Concat method accepts only a params string array and applies no separator.
// This is exactly equivalent to the + operator:
string sentence = string.Concat ("The", " quick", " brown", " fox");
string sameSentence = "The" + " quick" + " brown" + " fox";

sameSentence.Dump(); // The quick brown fox

string.Format and Compostite Format Strings

// When calling String.Format, provide a composite format string followed by each of the embedded variables
string composite = "It's {0} degrees in {1} on this {2} morning";
string s = string.Format (composite, 35, "Perth", DateTime.Now.DayOfWeek);
s.Dump();

// The minimum width in a format string is useful for aligning columns.

// If the value is negative, the data is left-aligned; otherwise, it’s right-aligned:
composite = "Name={0,-20} Credit Limit={1,15:C}";

Console.WriteLine (string.Format (composite, "Mary", 500));

Console.WriteLine (string.Format (composite, "Elizabeth", 20000));

// The equivalent without using string.Format:

s = "Name=" + "Mary".PadRight (20) + " Credit Limit=" + 500.ToString ("C").PadLeft (15);
s.Dump();

Comparing strings

// String comparisons can be ordinal vs culture-sensitive; case-sensitive vs case-insensitive.

Console.WriteLine (string.Equals ("foo", "FOO", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)); // True

// (The following symbols may not be displayed correctly, depending on your font):
Console.WriteLine ("ṻ" == "ǖ"); // False

// The order comparison methods return a positive number, a negative number, or zero, depending
// on whether the first value comes after, before, or alongside the second value:
Console.WriteLine ("Boston".CompareTo ("Austin")); // 1
Console.WriteLine ("Boston".CompareTo ("Boston")); // 0
Console.WriteLine ("Boston".CompareTo ("Chicago")); // -1
Console.WriteLine ("ṻ".CompareTo ("ǖ")); // 0
Console.WriteLine ("foo".CompareTo ("FOO")); // -1

// The following performs a case-insensitive comparison using the current culture:

Console.WriteLine (string.Compare ("foo", "FOO", true)); // 0

// By supplying a CultureInfo object, you can plug in any alphabet:

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CultureInfo german = CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo ("de-DE");
int i = string.Compare ("Müller", "Muller", false, german);
i.Dump(); // 1

StringBuilder

// Unlike string, StringBuilder is mutable.

// The following is more efficient than repeatedly concatenating ordinary string types:

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

for (int i = 0; i < 50; i++) sb.Append (i + ",");

// To get the final result, call ToString():

Console.WriteLine (sb.ToString());

sb.Remove (0, 60); // Remove first 50 characters

sb.Length = 10; // Truncate to 10 characters
sb.Replace (",", "+"); // Replace comma with +
sb.ToString().Dump();

sb.Length = 0; // Clear StringBuilder

Text Encodings and Unicode

Encoding.UTF8.Dump();

// Call Encoding.GetEncoding with a standard IANA name to obtain an encoding:

Encoding.RegisterProvider (CodePagesEncodingProvider.Instance);
Encoding chinese = Encoding.GetEncoding ("GB18030");
chinese.Dump();

// The static GetEncodings method returns a list of all supported encodings:

foreach (EncodingInfo info in Encoding.GetEncodings())
Console.WriteLine (info.Name);

Encoding to byte Arrays

byte[] utf8Bytes = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes ("0123456789");

byte[] utf16Bytes = System.Text.Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes ("0123456789");
byte[] utf32Bytes = System.Text.Encoding.UTF32.GetBytes ("0123456789");

Console.WriteLine (utf8Bytes.Length); // 10
Console.WriteLine (utf16Bytes.Length); // 20
Console.WriteLine (utf32Bytes.Length); // 40

string original1 = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString (utf8Bytes);

string original2 = System.Text.Encoding.Unicode.GetString (utf16Bytes);
string original3 = System.Text.Encoding.UTF32.GetString (utf32Bytes);

Console.WriteLine (original1); // 0123456789

Console.WriteLine (original2); // 0123456789
Console.WriteLine (original3); // 0123456789

UTF-16 and SurrogatePairs

int musicalNote = 0x1D161;

string s = char.ConvertFromUtf32 (musicalNote);

s.Length.Dump(); // 2 (surrogate pair)

char.ConvertToUtf32 (s, 0).ToString ("X").Dump(); // Consumes two chars

char.ConvertToUtf32 (s[0], s[1]).ToString ("X").Dump(); // Explicitly specify two chars

Dates and Times

Dates and Time Zones

Formatting and Parsing

Other Conversion Mechanisms

Working with Numbers

Enums

Tuples

The Guid Struct

Equality Comparison

Order Comparison

Utility Classes
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