is there a way to check if the bytes in a byte[] is a valid string, so if it contains ASCII characters only.
if (isValidASCII(myByteArray)) {
....
}
something that I could use like the above example but with functionality.
4 Answers
Well, if
contains ASCII characters only
means symbols with codes within [32..127] (corresponding characters are [' '..'~']) - standard ASCII table characters with command ones excluded:
Boolean isAscii = myByteArray.All(b => b >= 32 && b <= 127)
However, a valid string being defined like that can well apper to be
"$d|1 ?;)y" // this is a valid ASCII characters based string
or alike. If you want to wrap this simple Linq into a method:
public static bool isValidASCII(IEnumerable<byte> source) {
if (null == source)
return true; // or false, or throw exception
return source.All(b => b >= 32 && b <= 127);
}
...
if (isValidASCII(myByteArray)) {
...
}
1 Comment
Garric
I couldn't get the result until I included the low bytes: carriage return, tab, etc. Thus, to simplify, this will be quite enough: return source.All(b => b <= 127);
Literally answering your question:
Yes. It's not only very easy, it's trivial:
Boolean isValidAscii(Byte[] bytes) {
return true;
}
This is most likely not what you're looking for.
ASCII is a table that maps each byte to a character. By definition every byte represents a valid ASCII character.
So the question really is, what are you looking for? What is a valid ASCII character in your opinion.
Once you define that, it's easy to code:
Boolean iFindThisAValidAsciiCharacter(Char c) {
//your logic here
}
Boolean isValidAscii(Byte[] bytes) {
return bytes.forAll((Byte b) => iFindThisAValidAscciCharacter( (char)b))
}
The trick, of course, is in your definition of what you consider valid.
I advice you to take a step back, and consider why you want "valid ascii" in the first place. In this brave new world of internationalization and unicode, it sounds very unlikely that what you are trying to do is going to accomplish what you want to accomplish.
Comments
First you can convert your bytes array into string using this
System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString(BytesArray);
then check if it is valid or not.
1 Comment
CoffeDeveloper
this function will just replace bytes with value greater than 127, with "?"
string asciiString = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(BYTEVARIABLE));
now check if the the string has some chars that have been changed to '?' if yes it wasn't ASCII only.
Byte[]representing text in a non-ascii encoding, likely UTF-8 if you expect some "valid" characters. To do something useful, you need to figure out how the text is encoded, and use the proper decoder to get the string back out. The path you're taking now will only lead to misery.