C# – Convert string list to int list

You can convert a list of strings to a list of integers by using int.Parse() on all of the strings. There are two simple ways to do this: I’ll show examples of these using these methods and then explain how to handle parsing exceptions. Option 1 – Use List.ConvertAll() Here’s an example of how to … Read more

C# – Remove non-alphanumeric characters from a string

The simplest way to remove non-alphanumeric characters from a string is to use regex: Note: Don’t pass in a null, otherwise you’ll get an exception. Regex is the simplest approach for solving this problem, but it’s also the slowest. If you’re concerned about the performance take a look at the performance section below. This example … Read more

C# – Remove a set of characters from a string

The fastest and simplest way to remove a set of characters from a string is to use StringBuilder + List<char>, like this: I compared this with three other approaches. I did 100,000 iterations with a string with 2500 characters and a list of 15 characters to remove. This StringBuilder approach is almost 2x faster than … Read more

C# – How to use format strings with string interpolation

Interpolated strings have the following structure: {variable:format}. Typically you exclude the format, so they normally look like this: $”My name is {name}”. Here’s how to use format strings with an interpolated string: This outputs the following: This is the equivalent of using string.Format() like this: As you can see, specifying a format string with an … Read more

C# – Use string interpolation instead of string.Format

Using string.Format() is error prone and can lead to runtime exceptions. Using string interpolation prevents these problems (and it’s more readable). This article shows the two common mistakes you can make when using string.Format(), resulting in runtime exceptions, and shows how you can use string interpolation to prevent these problems. 1 – FormatException: Format string … Read more

C# – Hex string to byte array

This article shows code for converting a hex string to a byte array, unit tests, and a speed comparison. First, this diagram shows the algorithm for converting a hex string to a byte array. To convert a hex string to a byte array, you need to loop through the hex string and convert two characters … Read more

C# – Use Convert.ChangeType to convert string to any type

You can use Convert.ChangeType() to convert from a string to any type, like this: Normally you’d call the specific type converter method, like Convert.ToBoolean(“true”). However, sometimes it makes sense to use the generalized type converter method – Convert.ChangeType() – instead of hardcoding the calls to specific type converter methods. I’ll show an example of when … Read more