Why is there no Char Empty like String Empty

Question

Is there a reason for this  I am asking because if you needed to use lots of empty chars then you get into the same situation as you would when you use lots of empty strings   Edit  The reason for this usage was this   myString Replace   c         So remove all instances of  c s from myString

User · Answer

myString   myString Replace  c  ToString           OK  this is not particularly elegant for removing letters  since the  Replace method has an overload that takes string parameters  But this works for removing carriage returns  line feeds  tabs  etc  This example removes tab characters   myString   myString Replace   t  ToString

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A char  unlike a string  is a discrete thing with a fixed size   A string is really a container of chars   So  Char Empty doesn t really make sense in that context   If you have a char  it s not empty

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There s no such thing as an empty character  It always contains something  Even   0  is a character

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You could use nullable chars   char  c

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A char is a value type  so its value cannot be null   Unless it is wrapped in a Nullable container     Since it can t be null  in contains some numeric code and each code is mapped to some character

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Doesn t answer your first question - but for the specific problem you had  you can just use strings instead of chars  right    myString Replace  c         There a reason you wouldn t want to do that

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How about BOM  the magical character Microsoft adds to start of files  at least XML

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If you want to remove characters that satisfy a specific condition  you may use this   string s    SoMEthInG   s   new string s Where c   gt  char IsUpper c   ToArray        This will leave only the uppercase characters in the string    In other words  you may  use  the string as an IEnumerable lt char gt   make changes on it and then convert it back to a string as shown above   Again  this enables to not only remove a specific char because of the lambda expression  although you can do so if you change the lambda expression like this  c   gt  c     t

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Easiest way to blanket remove a character from string is to Trim it  cl   cl Trim        Removes all of the spaces in a string

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If you don t need the entire string  you can take advantage of the delayed execution   public static class StringExtensions       public static IEnumerable lt char gt  RemoveChar this IEnumerable lt char gt  originalString  char removingChar                return originalString Where  char   gt   char    removingChar             You can even combine multiple characters     string veryLongText    abcdefghijk       IEnumerable lt char gt  firstFiveCharsWithoutCsAndDs   veryLongText              RemoveChar  c                RemoveChar  d                Take 5         and only the first 7 characters will be evaluated     EDIT  or  even better   public static class StringExtensions       public static IEnumerable lt char gt  RemoveChars this IEnumerable lt char gt  originalString          params char   removingChars                return originalString Except removingChars             and its usage           var veryLongText    abcdefghijk              IEnumerable lt char gt  firstFiveCharsWithoutCsAndDs   veryLongText              RemoveChars  c    d                Take 5               ToArray      to prevent multiple execution of  RemoveChars

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use    myString Replace   c

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public static string QuitEscChars this string s         return s Replace   char 27  ToString     quot  quot

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The same reason there isn t an int Empty  Containers can be empty  scalar values cannot  If you mean 0  which is not empty   then use   0   If you mean null  then use null

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You can also rebuild your string character by character  excluding the characters that you want to get rid of   Here s an extension method to do this       static public string RemoveAny this string s  string charsToRemove                var result               foreach  var c in s              if  charsToRemove Contains c                   continue              else                 result    c           return result          It s not slick or fancy  but it works well   Use like this   string newString    My String  RemoveAny         yields  MyString

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In terms of C  language  the following may not make much sense  And this is not a direct answer to the question   But following is what I did in one of my business scenarios  char  myCharFromUI   Convert ToChar  quot   quot    string myStringForDatabaseInsert   myCharFromUI ToString   Trim    if  String IsNullOrEmpty myStringForDatabaseInsert Trim           Console Write  quot Success quot       The null and white space had different business flows in my project  While inserting into database  I need to insert empty string to the database if it is white space

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If you want to eliminate the empty char in string  the following will work  Just convert to any datatype representation you want  private void button1 Click object sender  EventArgs e         Int32 i       String name       Int32   array number   new int 100        name    quot 1 3  5  17   8    9    6 quot        name   name Replace       x         char   chr   name ToCharArray          for  i   0  i  lt  name Length  i                  if   chr i      x                          array number i    Convert ToInt32 chr i  ToString                 MessageBox Show array number i  ToString

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Not an answer to your question  but to denote a default char you can use just   default char    which is same as char MinValue which in turn is same as  0  One shouldn t use if for something like an empty string though

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There s no such thing as an empty char  The closest you can get is   0   the Unicode  null  character  Given that you can embed that within string literals or express it on its own very easily  why would you want a separate field for it  Equally  the  it s easy to confuse    and      arguments don t apply for   0    If you could give an example of where you d want to use it and why you think it would be better  that might help

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Use Char MinValue which works the same as   0   But be careful it is not the same as String Empty

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I know this one is pretty old  but I encountered an issue recently with having to do multiple replacements to make a file name safe   First  in the latest  NET string Replace function null is the equivalent to empty character   Having said that  what is missing from  Net is a simple replace all that will replace any character in an array with the desired character   Please feel free to reference the code below  runs in LinqPad for testing       LinqPad  ReplaceAll and SafeFileName void Main            a B C   Replace           Dump                           can only replace 1 character for one character   gt  a B C       a B C   Replace      null  Dump                          null replaces with empty   gt  aBC       a B C   Replace      null  Replace     null  Dump        Have to chain for multiples          Need a ReplaceAll  so I don t have to chain calls         abc 123 txt   SafeFileName   Dump          abc 1 2 3 txt   SafeFileName   Dump          a bc 1 2 3 txt   SafeFileName   Dump          a bc 1 2 3 txt   SafeFileName      Dump            abc 123   SafeFileName      Dump       Throws exception as expected      static class StringExtensions        public static string SafeFileName this string value  char  replacement   null                return value ReplaceAll replacement                    lt     gt                                public static string ReplaceAll this string value  char  replacement  params char   charsToGo            if replacement HasValue    false                   return string Join     value AsEnumerable   Where x   gt  charsToGo Contains x     false                      else               if charsToGo Contains replacement Value                    throw new ArgumentException string Format  Replacement   0   is invalid      replacement    replacement                               return string Join     value AsEnumerable   Select x   gt  charsToGo Contains x     true   replacement   x

[c#] Why is there no Char.Empty like String.Empty?

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