Convert strings to/from C# syntax?

Michael A. Covington

Is there a built-in way to convert strings to and from their syntactic
representation in C#?

For example, suppose I have a string containing 'a' and a newline character
and 'b'. Is there some built-in way to render this as a string containing
the characters 'a' '\' 'n' 'b' ?

And the inverse?

Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]

Michael,

Do you mean you want a stirng literal like this:

"a\nb"

Or are you looking for a routine which will take the above literal and
give you the equivalent of:

"a\\nb"

Which when printed will give you "a\nb". If it is the latter, then
AFAIK, the answer is no, you would have to code this yourself.


--
- Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]
-

"Michael A. Covington" <.edu.for.address> wrote in message
news:.gbl...
> Is there a built-in way to convert strings to and from their syntactic
> representation in C#?
>
> For example, suppose I have a string containing 'a' and a newline
> character and 'b'. Is there some built-in way to render this as a string
> containing the characters 'a' '\' 'n' 'b' ?
>
> And the inverse?
>
>
>

Michael A. Covington

"Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]" <> wrote in
message news:...
> Michael,
>
> Do you mean you want a stirng literal like this:
>
> "a\nb"
>
> Or are you looking for a routine which will take the above literal and
> give you the equivalent of:
>
> "a\\nb"
>
> Which when printed will give you "a\nb". If it is the latter, then
> AFAIK, the answer is no, you would have to code this yourself.

The latter. Thanks.

Niels Ull

> Michael,
>
> Do you mean you want a stirng literal like this:
>
> "a\nb"
>
> Or are you looking for a routine which will take the above literal
> and give you the equivalent of:
>
> "a\\nb"
>
> Which when printed will give you "a\nb". If it is the latter,
> then AFAIK, the answer is no, you would have to code this yourself.

Well, it is probably much easier to code it yourself, but you could use the
CodeDOM, e.g.

string myString = "a\nb";

CodePrimitiveExpression strExp = new CodePrimitiveExpression(mystring);
CSharpCodeProvider csharpcodeprovider = new CSharpCodeProvider();
StringWriter result = new StringWriter();
csharpcodeprovider.GenerateCodeFromExpression(strE xp, result, new CodeGeneratorOptions());
return result.ToString();


Regards
Niels Harremoës







>
> "Michael A. Covington" <.edu.for.address> wrote in message
> news:.gbl...
>
>> Is there a built-in way to convert strings to and from their
>> syntactic representation in C#?
>>
>> For example, suppose I have a string containing 'a' and a newline
>> character and 'b'. Is there some built-in way to render this as a
>> string containing the characters 'a' '\' 'n' 'b' ?
>>
>> And the inverse?
>>