How can you strip non-ASCII characters from a string? (in C#)
Question
How can you strip non-ASCII characters from a string? (in C#)
Solution
string s = "søme string";
s = Regex.Replace(s, @"[^\u0000-\u007F]+", string.Empty);
OTHER TIPS
Here is a pure .NET solution that doesn't use regular expressions:
string inputString = "Räksmörgås";
string asAscii = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(
Encoding.Convert(
Encoding.UTF8,
Encoding.GetEncoding(
Encoding.ASCII.EncodingName,
new EncoderReplacementFallback(string.Empty),
new DecoderExceptionFallback()
),
Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(inputString)
)
);
It may look cumbersome, but it should be intuitive. It uses the .NET ASCII encoding to convert a string. UTF8 is used during the conversion because it can represent any of the original characters. It uses an EncoderReplacementFallback to to convert any non-ASCII character to an empty string.
I believe MonsCamus meant:
parsememo = Regex.Replace(parsememo, @"[^\u0020-\u007E]", string.Empty);
If you want not to strip, but to actually convert latin accented to non-accented characters, take a look at this question: How do I translate 8bit characters into 7bit characters? (i.e. Ü to U)
Inspired by philcruz's Regular Expression solution, I've made a pure LINQ solution
public static string PureAscii(this string source, char nil = ' ')
{
var min = '\u0000';
var max = '\u007F';
return source.Select(c => c < min ? nil : c > max ? nil : c).ToText();
}
public static string ToText(this IEnumerable<char> source)
{
var buffer = new StringBuilder();
foreach (var c in source)
buffer.Append(c);
return buffer.ToString();
}
This is untested code.
no need for regex. just use encoding...
sOutput = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString(System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(sInput));
I found the following slightly altered range useful for parsing comment blocks out of a database, this means that you won't have to contend with tab and escape characters which would cause a CSV field to become upset.
parsememo = Regex.Replace(parsememo, @"[^\u001F-\u007F]", string.Empty);
If you want to avoid other special characters or particular punctuation check the ascii table
I came here looking for a solution for extended ascii characters, but couldnt find it. The closest I found is bzlm's solution. But that works only for ASCII Code upto 127(obviously you can replace the encoding type in his code, but i think it was a bit complex to understand. Hence, sharing this version). Here's a solution that works for extended ASCII codes i.e. upto 255 which is the ISO 8859-1
It finds and strips out non-ascii characters(greater than 255)
Dim str1 as String= "â, ??î or ôu🕧� n☁i✑💴++$-💯♓!🇪🚑🌚‼⁉4⃣od;/⏬'®;😁☕😁:☝)😁😁///😍1!@#"
Dim extendedAscii As Encoding = Encoding.GetEncoding("ISO-8859-1",
New EncoderReplacementFallback(String.empty),
New DecoderReplacementFallback())
Dim extendedAsciiBytes() As Byte = extendedAscii.GetBytes(str1)
Dim str2 As String = extendedAscii.GetString(extendedAsciiBytes)
console.WriteLine(str2)
'Output : â, ??î or ôu ni++$-!‼⁉4od;/';:)///1!@#$%^yz:
Here's a working fiddle for the code
Replace the encoding as per the requirement, rest should remain the same.
This is not optimal performance-wise, but a pretty straight-forward Linq approach:
string strippedString = new string(
yourString.Where(c => c <= sbyte.MaxValue).ToArray()
);
The downside is that all the "surviving" characters are first put into an array of type char[]
which is then thrown away after the string
constructor no longer uses it.
I used this regex expression:
string s = "søme string";
Regex regex = new Regex(@"[^a-zA-Z0-9\s]", (RegexOptions)0);
return regex.Replace(s, "");
I use this regular expression to filter out bad characters in a filename.
Regex.Replace(directory, "[^a-zA-Z0-9\\:_\- ]", "")
That should be all the characters allowed for filenames.