I have, for example, this Unicode string, which consists of the Cyclone and the Japanese Castle defined in C# and .NET, which uses UTF-16 for its CLR string encoding:
var value = "🌀🏯";
If you check this, you find very quickly that value.Length = 4 because C# uses UTF-16 encoded strings, so for these reasons I can't just loop on each character and get its UTF-32 decimal value: foreach (var character in value) result = (ulong)character;. It begs the question, how can I get the UTF-32 decimal value for each character in any string?
Cyclone should be 127744 and Japanese Castle should be 127983, but I am looking for a general answer that can take any C# string and always produce a UTF-32 decimal value out of each character inside of it.
I've even tried taking a look at Char.ConvertToUtf32, but this seems to be problematic if, for example:
var value = "a🌀c🏯";
This has a length of 6. So, how do I know when a new character begins? For example:
Char.ConvertToUtf32(value, 0) 97 int
Char.ConvertToUtf32(value, 1) 127744 int
Char.ConvertToUtf32(value, 2) 'Char.ConvertToUtf32(value, 2)' threw an exception of type 'System.ArgumentException' int {System.ArgumentException}
Char.ConvertToUtf32(value, 3) 99 int
Char.ConvertToUtf32(value, 4) 127983 int
Char.ConvertToUtf32(value, 5) 'Char.ConvertToUtf32(value, 5)' threw an exception of type 'System.ArgumentException' int {System.ArgumentException}
There is also the:
public static int ConvertToUtf32(
char highSurrogate,
char lowSurrogate
)
But for me to use this as well I need to figure out when I have surrogate pairs. How can you do that?
Solution 1
string value = "🌀🏯";
byte[] rawUtf32AsBytes = Encoding.UTF32.GetBytes(value);
int[] rawUtf32 = new int[rawUtf32AsBytes.Length / 4];
Buffer.BlockCopy(rawUtf32AsBytes, 0, rawUtf32, 0, rawUtf32AsBytes.Length);
Solution 2
string value = "🌀🏯";
List<int> rawUtf32list = new List<int>();
for (int i = 0; i < value.Length; i++)
{
if (Char.IsHighSurrogate(value[i]))
{
rawUtf32list.Add(Char.ConvertToUtf32(value[i], value[i + 1]));
i++;
}
else
rawUtf32list.Add((int)value[i]);
}
Update:
Starting with .NET Core 3.0 we have the Rune struct that represents a UTF32 character:
string value = "a🌀c🏯";
var runes = value.EnumerateRunes();
// writes a:97, 🌀:127744, c:99, 🏯:127983
Console.WriteLine(String.Join(", ", runes.Select(r => $"{r}:{r.Value}")));
Here is an extension method that illustrates one way to do it. The idea is that you can loop through each character of the string, and use char.ConvertToUtf32(string, index) to get the unicode value. If the returned value is larger than 0xFFFF, then you know that the unicode value was composed of a set of surrogate characters, and you can adjust the index value accordingly to skip the 2nd surrogate character.
Extension method:
public static IEnumerable<int> GetUnicodeCodePoints(this string s)
{
for (int i = 0; i < s.Length; i++)
{
int unicodeCodePoint = char.ConvertToUtf32(s, i);
if (unicodeCodePoint > 0xffff)
{
i++;
}
yield return unicodeCodePoint;
}
}
Sample usage:
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string s = "a🌀c🏯";
foreach(int unicodeCodePoint in s.GetUnicodeCodePoints())
{
Console.WriteLine(unicodeCodePoint);
}
}
I have an API which returns a byte[] over the network which represents information about a device.
It is in format 15ab1234cd\r\n where the first 2 characters are a HEX representation of the amount of data in the message.
I am aware I can convert this to a string via ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetString, and then use Convert.ToInt32(string.Substring(0, 2), 16) to achieve this. However the whole thing stays a byte array throughout the life of the whole program I am writing, and I don't want to convert to a string just for the purpose of getting the packet length.
Any suggestions of converting array of chars in hex format to an int in C#?
There is no .Net provided function that does it. Converting first 2 bytes to string with Encoding.GetString is very readable (possibly not most performant):
var hexValue = ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetString(byteData, 0, 2);
var intValue = Convert.ToInt32(hexValue, 16);
You can easily write conversion code (map '0'-'9' and 'a'-'f' / 'A'-'F' ranges to corresponding integer value and add together.
Here is one-statement conversion strictly for entertainment purposes. The resulting lambda (before ((byte)'0',(byte)'A') in sample takes 2 byte arguments assuming them to be ASCII characters and convert into integer.
((Func<Func<char,int>, Func<byte, byte, int>>)
(charToInt=> (c, c1)=>
charToInt(char.ToUpper((char)c)) * 16 + charToInt(char.ToUpper((char)c1))))
((Func<char, int>)(
c => c >= '0' && c <='9' ? c-'0' : c >='A' && c <= 'F' ? c - 'A' + 10 : 0))
((byte)'0',(byte)'A')
If you know the first two values are valid hexadecimal characters (0-9, A-Z, a-z), it is possible to convert to a hex value using logical operators.
int GetIntFromHexBytes(byte[] s, int start, int length)
{
int ret = 0;
for (int i = start; i < start+length; i++)
{
ret <<= 4;
ret |= (byte)((s[i] & 0x0f) + ((s[i] & 0x40) >> 6) * 9);
}
return ret;
}
(This works because c & 0x0f returns the 4 least significant bits, and will range from 0-9 for the values '0'-'9', and from 1 - 6 for both capital and lowercase letters ('a' - 'z' and 'A' - 'Z'). s[i] & 0x40 is 0 for numeric characters, and 0x40 for alpha characters; shifting right six characters provides a value of 0 for numeric characters and 1 for alphabetic characters. Shifting left and multiplying by 9 will add a bias of 9 for alpha characters to map A-F and a-f from 1-6 to 10-15.)
Given the byte array:
byte[] b = { (byte)'7', (byte)'f', (byte)'1', (byte)'c' };
Calling GetIntFromHexBytes(b, 0, 2) will return 127 (0x7f), the first two bytes of the array, as required.
As a caution: this approach does no bounds checking. A check can be added in the loop if needed to ensure that the input bytes are valid hex characters.
I need to travers the string ,which should be the string of digits and make some arithmetic operations on these digits
for (int i = data.Length - 1; i >= 0; --i)
{
uint curDigit;
//Convert to uint the current rightmost digit, if convert fails return false (the valid data should be numeric)
try
{
curDigit = Convert.ToUInt32(data[i]);
//arithmetic ops...
}
catch
{
return false;
}
I test it with the following input data string.
"4000080706200002"
For i = 15,corresponding to the rightmost digit 2,I get 50 as an output from
curDigit = Convert.ToUInt32(data[i]);
Can someone please explain me what is wrong?and how to correct the issue
50 is the ascii code for '2'. what you need is '2' - '0' (50-48)
byte[] digits = "4000080706200002".Select(x => (byte)(x - '0')).ToArray();
http://www.asciitable.com/
What you are getting back is the ascii value of character 2, You can use call ToString on the character item and then call Convert.ToUnit32, Consider the example:
char x = '2';
uint curDigit = Convert.ToUInt32(x.ToString());
this will give you back 2 as curDigit
For your code you can just use:
curDigit = Convert.ToUInt32(data[i].ToString());
Another option is to use char.GetNumericValue like:
uint curDigit = (UInt32) char.GetNumericValue(data[i]);
char.GetNumericValue returns double and you can cast the result back to UInt32
The problem is that data[i] returns a char variable, that essentialy is an integer holding the ASCII code of the character. So '2' corresponds to 50.
There are 2 things you can do to overcome this behaviour:
Better curDigit = Convert.ToUInt32(data[i] - '0'); //Substract the ASCII representation of '0' from the char
curDigit = Convert.ToUInt32(data.Substring(i,1)); //Use substring to return a string instead of char. Note, that this method is less efficient, as Convert from string essentially splits the string into chars, and substract '0' from each and every one of them.
Your getting the ASCII (or Unicode) values for those characters. The problem is that the code points for the characters '0' … '9' are not 0 … 9, but 48 … 57. To fix this, you need to adjust by that offset. For example:
curDigit = Convert.ToUInt32(data[i] - '0');
Or
curDigit = Convert.ToUInt32(data[i] - 48);
Rather than messing around with ASCII calculations you could use UInt32.TryParse as an alternative solution. However, this method requires a string input not char, so you would have to modify your approach a little:
string input = "4000080706200002";
string[] digits = input.Select(x => x.ToString()).ToArray();
foreach(string digit in digits)
{
uint curDigit = 0;
if(UInt32.TryParse(digit, out curDigit))
{
//arithmetic ops...
}
//else failed to parse
}
I'm trying to use the String.PadRight method in C#, but it's just not doing anything with the string.
Code:
int strlen = 4 - (data.Length % 4);
char pad = '=';
string datapad = data.PadRight(strlen, pad);
The string in question is Base64 encoded data, and I need the '=' at the end to pad it for ConvertFromBase64 to work properly.
eyJhbGciOiJSUzI1NiIsImtpZCI6IjY5NDZmZjNlZGUyOTk3ZWExMmVhMDRlNGFhNjYyOWRjZWVhZWZhOTAifQ
strlen must be greater than the length of data in order for it to pad it. As Grant Winney points out, PadRight takes the total width of the string, and not just the number of times you'd like to repeat that character at the end of it.
In the code below, strlen will always be less than or equal to 4, which is a lot less than the length of your base 64 encoded string.
int strlen = 4 - (data.Length % 4);
So really you might want to do this instead:
int strlen = 4 - (data.Length % 4) + data.Length;
Or just:
string datapad = data.PadRight(strlen + data.Length, pad);
A recent project called for importing data into an Oracle database. The program that will do this is a C# .Net 3.5 app and I'm using the Oracle.DataAccess connection library to handle the actual inserting.
I ran into a problem where I'd receive this error message when inserting a particular field:
ORA-12899 Value too large for column X
I used Field.Substring(0, MaxLength); but still got the error (though not for every record).
Finally I saw what should have been obvious, my string was in ANSI and the field was UTF8. Its length is defined in bytes, not characters.
This gets me to my question. What is the best way to trim my string to fix the MaxLength?
My substring code works by character length. Is there simple C# function that can trim a UT8 string intelligently by byte length (ie not hack off half a character) ?
I think we can do better than naively counting the total length of a string with each addition. LINQ is cool, but it can accidentally encourage inefficient code. What if I wanted the first 80,000 bytes of a giant UTF string? That's a lot of unnecessary counting. "I've got 1 byte. Now I've got 2. Now I've got 13... Now I have 52,384..."
That's silly. Most of the time, at least in l'anglais, we can cut exactly on that nth byte. Even in another language, we're less than 6 bytes away from a good cutting point.
So I'm going to start from #Oren's suggestion, which is to key off of the leading bit of a UTF8 char value. Let's start by cutting right at the n+1th byte, and use Oren's trick to figure out if we need to cut a few bytes earlier.
Three possibilities
If the first byte after the cut has a 0 in the leading bit, I know I'm cutting precisely before a single byte (conventional ASCII) character, and can cut cleanly.
If I have a 11 following the cut, the next byte after the cut is the start of a multi-byte character, so that's a good place to cut too!
If I have a 10, however, I know I'm in the middle of a multi-byte character, and need to go back to check to see where it really starts.
That is, though I want to cut the string after the nth byte, if that n+1th byte comes in the middle of a multi-byte character, cutting would create an invalid UTF8 value. I need to back up until I get to one that starts with 11 and cut just before it.
Code
Notes: I'm using stuff like Convert.ToByte("11000000", 2) so that it's easy to tell what bits I'm masking (a little more about bit masking here). In a nutshell, I'm &ing to return what's in the byte's first two bits and bringing back 0s for the rest. Then I check the XX from XX000000 to see if it's 10 or 11, where appropriate.
I found out today that C# 6.0 might actually support binary representations, which is cool, but we'll keep using this kludge for now to illustrate what's going on.
The PadLeft is just because I'm overly OCD about output to the Console.
So here's a function that'll cut you down to a string that's n bytes long or the greatest number less than n that's ends with a "complete" UTF8 character.
public static string CutToUTF8Length(string str, int byteLength)
{
byte[] byteArray = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(str);
string returnValue = string.Empty;
if (byteArray.Length > byteLength)
{
int bytePointer = byteLength;
// Check high bit to see if we're [potentially] in the middle of a multi-byte char
if (bytePointer >= 0
&& (byteArray[bytePointer] & Convert.ToByte("10000000", 2)) > 0)
{
// If so, keep walking back until we have a byte starting with `11`,
// which means the first byte of a multi-byte UTF8 character.
while (bytePointer >= 0
&& Convert.ToByte("11000000", 2) != (byteArray[bytePointer] & Convert.ToByte("11000000", 2)))
{
bytePointer--;
}
}
// See if we had 1s in the high bit all the way back. If so, we're toast. Return empty string.
if (0 != bytePointer)
{
returnValue = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(byteArray, 0, bytePointer); // hat tip to #NealEhardt! Well played. ;^)
}
}
else
{
returnValue = str;
}
return returnValue;
}
I initially wrote this as a string extension. Just add back the this before string str to put it back into extension format, of course. I removed the this so that we could just slap the method into Program.cs in a simple console app to demonstrate.
Test and expected output
Here's a good test case, with the output it create below, written expecting to be the Main method in a simple console app's Program.cs.
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string testValue = "12345“”67890”";
for (int i = 0; i < 15; i++)
{
string cutValue = Program.CutToUTF8Length(testValue, i);
Console.WriteLine(i.ToString().PadLeft(2) +
": " + Encoding.UTF8.GetByteCount(cutValue).ToString().PadLeft(2) +
":: " + cutValue);
}
Console.WriteLine();
Console.WriteLine();
foreach (byte b in Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(testValue))
{
Console.WriteLine(b.ToString().PadLeft(3) + " " + (char)b);
}
Console.WriteLine("Return to end.");
Console.ReadLine();
}
Output follows. Notice that the "smart quotes" in testValue are three bytes long in UTF8 (though when we write the chars to the console in ASCII, it outputs dumb quotes). Also note the ?s output for the second and third bytes of each smart quote in the output.
The first five characters of our testValue are single bytes in UTF8, so 0-5 byte values should be 0-5 characters. Then we have a three-byte smart quote, which can't be included in its entirety until 5 + 3 bytes. Sure enough, we see that pop out at the call for 8.Our next smart quote pops out at 8 + 3 = 11, and then we're back to single byte characters through 14.
0: 0::
1: 1:: 1
2: 2:: 12
3: 3:: 123
4: 4:: 1234
5: 5:: 12345
6: 5:: 12345
7: 5:: 12345
8: 8:: 12345"
9: 8:: 12345"
10: 8:: 12345"
11: 11:: 12345""
12: 12:: 12345""6
13: 13:: 12345""67
14: 14:: 12345""678
49 1
50 2
51 3
52 4
53 5
226 â
128 ?
156 ?
226 â
128 ?
157 ?
54 6
55 7
56 8
57 9
48 0
226 â
128 ?
157 ?
Return to end.
So that's kind of fun, and I'm in just before the question's five year anniversary. Though Oren's description of the bits had a small error, that's exactly the trick you want to use. Thanks for the question; neat.
Here are two possible solution - a LINQ one-liner processing the input left to right and a traditional for-loop processing the input from right to left. Which processing direction is faster depends on the string length, the allowed byte length, and the number and distribution of multibyte characters and is hard to give a general suggestion. The decision between LINQ and traditional code I probably a matter of taste (or maybe speed).
If speed matters, one could think about just accumulating the byte length of each character until reaching the maximum length instead of calculating the byte length of the whole string in each iteration. But I am not sure if this will work because I don't know UTF-8 encoding well enough. I could theoreticaly imagine that the byte length of a string does not equal the sum of the byte lengths of all characters.
public static String LimitByteLength(String input, Int32 maxLength)
{
return new String(input
.TakeWhile((c, i) =>
Encoding.UTF8.GetByteCount(input.Substring(0, i + 1)) <= maxLength)
.ToArray());
}
public static String LimitByteLength2(String input, Int32 maxLength)
{
for (Int32 i = input.Length - 1; i >= 0; i--)
{
if (Encoding.UTF8.GetByteCount(input.Substring(0, i + 1)) <= maxLength)
{
return input.Substring(0, i + 1);
}
}
return String.Empty;
}
Shorter version of ruffin's answer. Takes advantage of the design of UTF8:
public static string LimitUtf8ByteCount(this string s, int n)
{
// quick test (we probably won't be trimming most of the time)
if (Encoding.UTF8.GetByteCount(s) <= n)
return s;
// get the bytes
var a = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(s);
// if we are in the middle of a character (highest two bits are 10)
if (n > 0 && ( a[n]&0xC0 ) == 0x80)
{
// remove all bytes whose two highest bits are 10
// and one more (start of multi-byte sequence - highest bits should be 11)
while (--n > 0 && ( a[n]&0xC0 ) == 0x80)
;
}
// convert back to string (with the limit adjusted)
return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(a, 0, n);
}
All of the other answers appear to miss the fact that this functionality is already built into .NET, in the Encoder class. For bonus points, this approach will also work for other encodings.
public static string LimitByteLength(string message, int maxLength)
{
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(message) || Encoding.UTF8.GetByteCount(message) <= maxLength)
{
return message;
}
var encoder = Encoding.UTF8.GetEncoder();
byte[] buffer = new byte[maxLength];
char[] messageChars = message.ToCharArray();
encoder.Convert(
chars: messageChars,
charIndex: 0,
charCount: messageChars.Length,
bytes: buffer,
byteIndex: 0,
byteCount: buffer.Length,
flush: false,
charsUsed: out int charsUsed,
bytesUsed: out int bytesUsed,
completed: out bool completed);
// I don't think we can return message.Substring(0, charsUsed)
// as that's the number of UTF-16 chars, not the number of codepoints
// (think about surrogate pairs). Therefore I think we need to
// actually convert bytes back into a new string
return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(buffer, 0, bytesUsed);
}
If you're using .NET Standard 2.1+, you can simplify it a bit:
public static string LimitByteLength(string message, int maxLength)
{
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(message) || Encoding.UTF8.GetByteCount(message) <= maxLength)
{
return message;
}
var encoder = Encoding.UTF8.GetEncoder();
byte[] buffer = new byte[maxLength];
encoder.Convert(message.AsSpan(), buffer.AsSpan(), false, out _, out int bytesUsed, out _);
return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(buffer, 0, bytesUsed);
}
None of the other answers account for extended grapheme clusters, such as 👩🏽🚒. This is composed of 4 Unicode scalars (👩, 🏽, a zero-width joiner, and 🚒), so you need knowledge of the Unicode standard to avoid splitting it in the middle and producing 👩 or 👩🏽.
In .NET 5 onwards, you can write this as:
public static string LimitByteLength(string message, int maxLength)
{
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(message) || Encoding.UTF8.GetByteCount(message) <= maxLength)
{
return message;
}
var enumerator = StringInfo.GetTextElementEnumerator(message);
var result = new StringBuilder();
int lengthBytes = 0;
while (enumerator.MoveNext())
{
lengthBytes += Encoding.UTF8.GetByteCount(enumerator.GetTextElement());
if (lengthBytes <= maxLength)
{
result.Append(enumerator.GetTextElement());
}
}
return result.ToString();
}
(This same code runs on earlier versions of .NET, but due to a bug it won't produce the correct result before .NET 5).
If a UTF-8 byte has a zero-valued high order bit, it's the beginning of a character. If its high order bit is 1, it's in the 'middle' of a character. The ability to detect the beginning of a character was an explicit design goal of UTF-8.
Check out the Description section of the wikipedia article for more detail.
Is there a reason that you need the database column to be declared in terms of bytes? That's the default, but it's not a particularly useful default if the database character set is variable width. I'd strongly prefer declaring the column in terms of characters.
CREATE TABLE length_example (
col1 VARCHAR2( 10 BYTE ),
col2 VARCHAR2( 10 CHAR )
);
This will create a table where COL1 will store 10 bytes of data and col2 will store 10 characters worth of data. Character length semantics make far more sense in a UTF8 database.
Assuming you want all the tables you create to use character length semantics by default, you can set the initialization parameter NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS to CHAR. At that point, any tables you create will default to using character length semantics rather than byte length semantics if you don't specify CHAR or BYTE in the field length.
Following Oren Trutner's comment here are two more solutions to the problem:
here we count the number of bytes to remove from the end of the string according to each character at the end of the string, so we don't evaluate the entire string in every iteration.
string str = "朣楢琴执执 瑩浻牡楧硰执执獧浻牡楧敬瑦 瀰 絸朣杢执獧扻捡杫潲湵 潣"
int maxBytesLength = 30;
var bytesArr = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(str);
int bytesToRemove = 0;
int lastIndexInString = str.Length -1;
while(bytesArr.Length - bytesToRemove > maxBytesLength)
{
bytesToRemove += Encoding.UTF8.GetByteCount(new char[] {str[lastIndexInString]} );
--lastIndexInString;
}
string trimmedString = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(bytesArr,0,bytesArr.Length - bytesToRemove);
//Encoding.UTF8.GetByteCount(trimmedString);//get the actual length, will be <= 朣楢琴执执 瑩浻牡楧硰执执獧浻牡楧敬瑦 瀰 絸朣杢执獧扻捡杫潲湵 潣潬昣昸昸慢正
And an even more efficient(and maintainable) solution:
get the string from the bytes array according to desired length and cut the last character because it might be corrupted
string str = "朣楢琴执执 瑩浻牡楧硰执执獧浻牡楧敬瑦 瀰 絸朣杢执獧扻捡杫潲湵 潣"
int maxBytesLength = 30;
string trimmedWithDirtyLastChar = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(str),0,maxBytesLength);
string trimmedString = trimmedWithDirtyLastChar.Substring(0,trimmedWithDirtyLastChar.Length - 1);
The only downside with the second solution is that we might cut a perfectly fine last character, but we are already cutting the string, so it might fit with the requirements.
Thanks to Shhade who thought about the second solution
This is another solution based on binary search:
public string LimitToUTF8ByteLength(string text, int size)
{
if (size <= 0)
{
return string.Empty;
}
int maxLength = text.Length;
int minLength = 0;
int length = maxLength;
while (maxLength >= minLength)
{
length = (maxLength + minLength) / 2;
int byteLength = Encoding.UTF8.GetByteCount(text.Substring(0, length));
if (byteLength > size)
{
maxLength = length - 1;
}
else if (byteLength < size)
{
minLength = length + 1;
}
else
{
return text.Substring(0, length);
}
}
// Round down the result
string result = text.Substring(0, length);
if (size >= Encoding.UTF8.GetByteCount(result))
{
return result;
}
else
{
return text.Substring(0, length - 1);
}
}
public static string LimitByteLength3(string input, Int32 maxLenth)
{
string result = input;
int byteCount = Encoding.UTF8.GetByteCount(input);
if (byteCount > maxLenth)
{
var byteArray = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(input);
result = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(byteArray, 0, maxLenth);
}
return result;
}