Is there a way to access the character of a string in a string array in C#?

Question

I have a string array, I want to access the characters of the first element in that array:

string[] str= new string[num];

for(int i = 0; i < num; i++)
{
    str[i] = Console.ReadLine();
}

To access the characters of the first element in the string array, in Java

str[0].CharAt[0] // 1st character

Is there a way in C# for this? The only function I could see was use of substring. It will incur more overhead in such case.

Possible duplicate of how to return the character which is at the index? — Lance U. Matthews
– Lance U. Matthews, Commented Feb 1, 2017 at 20:36
@Rinktacular: "which will print out one character at a time" - nope, because str is an array of strings, not a single string. — O. R. Mapper
– O. R. Mapper, Commented Feb 1, 2017 at 20:40
@Rintacular this doesn't solve, I want to access character of a string in the array — Advaitha
– Advaitha, Commented Feb 1, 2017 at 20:42

Jeppe Stig Nielsen · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-01 20:43:39Z

5

You would use:

str[0][0]

where the first [0] is accessing the 0th array member, while the next [0] is the indexer defined by System.String which gives the 0th char value (UTF-16 code unit) of the string.

answered Feb 1, 2017 at 20:43

Jeppe Stig Nielsen

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Comments

NicoRiff · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-01 20:49:31Z

1

Yes, you can do that:

string[] s = new string[]{"something", "somethingMore"};
char c = s[0][0];

edited Feb 1, 2017 at 20:49

answered Feb 1, 2017 at 20:37

NicoRiff

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3 Comments

O. R. Mapper Over a year ago

What's the downvote on this answer for? It surely answers the question, even if the example is not directly copy-and-pasteable into the OP's code.

Rinktacular Over a year ago

This satisfies the question. Not sure why it is down voted.

Kenneth K. Over a year ago

Didn't downvote, but it doesn't answer the question. The question is about the characters inside a string inside an array. Your answer is just the characters inside the string. You're missing the array part.

Ryan Johnson · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-01 20:48:19Z

0

You could convert the first string of the string array to a character array and simply get the first value of the character array.

string[] stringArray = {"abc"};
char[] charArray = stringArray[0].ToCharArray();
char first = charArray[0];

answered Feb 1, 2017 at 20:48

Ryan Johnson

444 bronze badges

3 Comments

Jeppe Stig Nielsen Over a year ago

There is no need to copy the entire string contents over into a new array if you just want the first char.

EJoshuaS - Stand with Ukraine Over a year ago

Why make this into a char array?

Ryan Johnson Over a year ago

I didn't know you could index on a string like the other answers show. Thanks!

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