Unicode Decimal NCRs

Question

Hey,
After scouring the internet for a while im a bit baffled as to how to display decimal unicode characters within .NET.
I have a small app that collects some strings from a MySQL database, the string are stored as decimal NCRs (i.e H#) and i first of all tried converting them via MySQL so that i could make a new column with a converted string, however that wont work as they are technically 5 characters # & 7 2 ; so it doesnt convert them, so i thought maybe .NET would support it. However i cant find anything out about it, so im just wondering if anyone else has ever had to work with this and how they found a way round it?
I need to be able to add/edit/view the contained strings within the relvent plain text, any help would be great!

Alan · Accepted Answer

You can replace the decimal NCRs with ordinary unicode characters using a regular expression. For example:
using System;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
class Program
{
static void Main()
{
string s = "Hello";
Regex r = new Regex(@"&#\d{1,5};");
s = r.Replace(s, MatchEvaluator);
Console.WriteLine(s); // Hello
Console.ReadKey();
}
static string MatchEvaluator(Match m)
{
string temp = m.Value.ToString().Substring(2);
temp = temp.Substring(0, temp.Length - 1);
char c = (char)int.Parse(temp);
return c.ToString();
}
}

Lee · Answer

Brilliant thanks, will give it a shot, would be nicer to get the MySQL server to do it so im not having to loop round each result, but as im making sure they only get 50 per time its not end of the world..