I am reading information from a device and it's returning data to me in integer format and I need to convert this to ASCII characters using C#.
The following is an example of the data I have to convert. I receive the integer value 26990 back from my device and I need to convert that to ASCII. I just happen to know that for this value, the desired result would be "ni".
I know that the integer value 26990 is equal to 696e in hex, and 110100101101110 in binary, but would like to know how to do the conversion as I can't work it out for myself.
Can anyone help please?
Many thanks,
Karl
int i = 26990;
char c1 = (char)(i & 0xff);
char c2 = (char)(i >> 8);
Console.WriteLine("{0}{1}", c1, c2);
Use BitConverter and Encoding to perform the conversion:
class Program
{
public static void Main()
{
int d = 26990;
byte[] bytes = BitConverter.GetBytes(d);
string s = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString(bytes);
// note that s will contain extra NULLs here so..
s = s.TrimEnd('\0');
}
}
If the device is sending bytes you can use something like this:
byte[] bytes = new byte[] { 0x69, 0x6e };
string text = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString(bytes);
Otherwise, if the device is sending integers you can use something like this:
byte[] bytes = BitConverter.GetBytes(26990);
string text = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString(bytes, 0, 2);
In either case, text will contain "ni" after that executes. Note that in the latter you may have to deal with endianness issues.
Further reference:
Encoding class
Encoding.ASCII property
Encoding.GetString method overloads
Related
I am working a problem in C# and I am having issues with converting my string of multiple hex values to a byte[].
string word = "\xCD\x01\xEF\xD7\x30";
(\x starts each new value, so I have: CD 01 EF D7 30)
This is my first time asking a question here, so please let me know if you need anything extra from me.
More information on the project:
I need to be able to change both
"apple" and "\xCD\x01\xEF\xD7\x30" to a byte array.
For the normal string "apple" I use
byte[] data = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(word);
this does not seem to be working with "\xCD\x01\xEF\xD7\x30" I am getting the values
63, 1, 63, 63, 48
Ok... You were trying to directly "downcast"/"upcast" char <-> byte (where char is the C# char that is 16 bits long, and byte is 8 bits long).
There are various ways to do it. The simplest (probably not the more performant) is to use the iso-8859-1 encoding that "maps" the byte values 0-255 to the unicode codes 0-255 (and return).
Encoding enc = Encoding.GetEncoding("iso-8859-1");
string str = "apple";
byte[] bytes = enc.GetBytes(str);
string str2 = enc.GetString(bytes);
You can even do a little LINQ:
string str = "apple";
// This is "bad" if the string contains codepoints > 255
byte[] bytes = str.Select(x => (byte)x).ToArray();
// This is always safe, because by definition any value of a byte
// is a legal unicode character
string str2 = string.Concat(bytes.Select(x => (char)x));
I have a very specific requirement. I have some data. Of which, strings and spaces are to be converted to EBCDIC while numbers to Hexadecimal.
For Example, my string is "Test123"
Test => EBCDIC
123 => Hexadecimal.
What I am trying to do is check every character in string if its number or not, and then based on that doing my conversion.
byte[] dataBuffer = new byte[length];
int i = 0;
if (toEBCDIC)
{
foreach (char c in data)
{
byte[] temp = new byte[1];
if (Char.IsNumber(c))
{
string hexValue = Convert.ToInt32(c).ToString("X");
temp = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(hexValue);
dataBuffer[i] = temp[0];
}
else
{
temp = Encoding.GetEncoding("IBM01140").GetBytes(c.ToString());
dataBuffer[i] = temp[0];
}
i++;
}
dataBuffer.CopyTo(array, byteIndex);
The problem comes when i try to convert the number. I need to keep my output in byte array, as i have to write the output to a memory stream and then to a file.
When i get the hex value of number, and then try to convert it to byte, actual conversion happens.
For "1", hexvalue = 31.
Now I want to keep this 31 unchanged in bytes. I mean to say that, when i write it to byte array, it should remain 31 only. But when do GetBytes, it makes byte array, converting 3 and 1 separately to bytes.
Can anyone please help me on this..!!
The problem is here:
ToString("X")
Now it's a hexadecimal string. So in your example, from this point onward, the 3 and the 1 have become separated.
How to fix this: don't convert.
if (Char.IsNumber(c))
{
dataBuffer[i] = (byte)c;
}
Not tested. I think that's what you want. At least, that's what you describe in the last paragraph. That wouldn't make the numbers hexadecimal though - it would make them ASCII, and it's a bit odd to be mixing that with EBCDIC.
You convert the char to its code and then convert that code to string. You don't have to do the second step, instead use the code directly:
if (Char.IsNumber(c))
{
byte hexValue = Convert.ToByte(c);
dataBuffer[i] = hexValue;
}
I have a uint value that I need to represent as a ByteArray and the convert in a string.
When I convert back the string to a byte array I found different values.
I'm using standard ASCII converter so I don't understand why I'm getting different values.
To be more clear this is what I'm doing:
byte[] bArray = BitConverter.GetBytes((uint)49694);
string test = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString(bArray);
byte[] result = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(test);
The bytearray result is different from the first one:
bArray ->
[0x00000000]: 0x1e
[0x00000001]: 0xc2
[0x00000002]: 0x00
[0x00000003]: 0x00
result ->
[0x00000000]: 0x1e
[0x00000001]: 0x3f
[0x00000002]: 0x00
[0x00000003]: 0x00
Notice that the byte 1 is different in the two arrays.
Thanks for your support.
Regards
string test = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString(bArray);
byte[] result = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(test);
Because raw data is not ASCII. Encoding.GetString is only meaningful if the data you are decoding is text data in that encoding. Anything else: you corrupt it. If you want to store a byte[] as a string, then base-n is necessary - typically base-64 because a: it is conveniently available (Convert.{To|From}Base64String), and b: you can fit it into ASCII, so you rarely hit code-page / encoding issues. For example:
byte[] bArray = BitConverter.GetBytes((uint)49694);
string test = Convert.ToBase64String(bArray); // "HsIAAA=="
byte[] result = Convert.FromBase64String(test);
Because c2 is not a valid ASCII char and it is replaced with '?'(3f)
Converting any byte array to string using SomeEncoding.GetString() is not a safe method as #activwerx suggested in comments. Instead use Convert.FromBase64String, Convert.ToBase64String
I need to convert a string into it's binary equivilent and keep it in a string. Then return it back into it's ASCII equivalent.
You can encode a string into a byte-wise representation by using an Encoding, e.g. UTF-8:
var str = "Out of cheese error";
var bytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(str);
To get back a .NET string object:
var strAgain = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(bytes);
// str == strAgain
You seem to want the representation as a series of '1' and '0' characters; I'm not sure why you do, but that's possible too:
var binStr = string.Join("", bytes.Select(b => Convert.ToString(b, 2)));
Encodings take an abstract string (in the sense that they're an opaque representation of a series of Unicode code points), and map them into a concrete series of bytes. The bytes are meaningless (again, because they're opaque) without the encoding. But, with the encoding, they can be turned back into a string.
You seem to be mixing up "ASCII" with strings; ASCII is simply an encoding that deals only with code-points up to 128. If you have a string containing an 'é', for example, it has no ASCII representation, and so most definitely cannot be represented using a series of ASCII bytes, even though it can exist peacefully in a .NET string object.
See this article by Joel Spolsky for further reading.
You can use these functions for converting to binary and restore it back :
public static string BinaryToString(string data)
{
List<Byte> byteList = new List<Byte>();
for (int i = 0; i < data.Length; i += 8)
{
byteList.Add(Convert.ToByte(data.Substring(i, 8), 2));
}
return Encoding.ASCII.GetString(byteList.ToArray());
}
and for converting string to binary :
public static string StringToBinary(string data)
{
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
foreach (char c in data.ToCharArray())
{
sb.Append(Convert.ToString(c, 2).PadLeft(8, '0'));
}
return sb.ToString();
}
Hope Helps You.
First convert the string into bytes, as described in my comment and in Cameron's answer; then iterate, convert each byte into an 8-digit binary number (possibly with Convert.ToString, padding appropriately), then concatenate. For the reverse direction, split by 8 characters, run through Convert.ToInt16, build up a byte array, then convert back to a string with GetString.
I'm working with C# trying to convert a string value into a byte. Seems to be harder then I expected. Basically I have a string called hex = "0x32" and need byte block to equal this value.
string hex = "0x32";
byte block = Convert.ToByte(hex);
The above doesn't work, does anybody know how I can successfully assign the hex value to the byte. I need to append this byte to a byte array later in the code.
Try the following
byte block = Byte.Parse(hex.SubString(2), NumberStyles.HexNumber);
The reason for the SubString call is to remove the preceeding "0x" from the string. The Parse function does not expect the "0x" prefix even when NumberStyles.HexNumber is specified and will error if encountered
Convert.ToByte(hex, 16)
string hex = "0x32";
int value = Convert.ToInt32(hex, 16);
byte byteVal = Convert.ToByte(value);
Will work...
Edit
A little code to demonstrate that 0x32 (hex) and 50 (int) are the same.
string hex = "0x32";
byte[] byteVal = new byte[1];
byteVal[0] = Convert.Byte(hex, 16);
Console.WriteLine(byteVal[0] + " - Integer value");
Console.WriteLine(BitConverter.ToString(byteVal) + " - BitArray representation");;