System.Text Namespace

  • Reference

Contains classes that represent ASCII and Unicode character encodings; abstract base classes for converting blocks of characters to and from blocks of bytes; and a helper class that manipulates and formats String objects without creating intermediate instances of String.

Classes

Ascii
ASCIIEncoding

Represents an ASCII character encoding of Unicode characters.
CodePagesEncodingProvider

Provides access to an encoding provider for code pages that otherwise are available only in the desktop .NET Framework.
CompositeFormat

Represents a parsed composite format string.
Decoder

Converts a sequence of encoded bytes into a set of characters.
DecoderExceptionFallback

Provides a failure-handling mechanism, called a fallback, for an encoded input byte sequence that cannot be converted to an input character. The fallback throws an exception instead of decoding the input byte sequence. This class cannot be inherited.
DecoderExceptionFallbackBuffer

Throws DecoderFallbackException when an encoded input byte sequence cannot be converted to a decoded output character. This class cannot be inherited.
DecoderFallback

Provides a failure-handling mechanism, called a fallback, for an encoded input byte sequence that cannot be converted to an output character.
DecoderFallbackBuffer

Provides a buffer that allows a fallback handler to return an alternate string to a decoder when it cannot decode an input byte sequence.
DecoderFallbackException

The exception that is thrown when a decoder fallback operation fails. This class cannot be inherited.
DecoderReplacementFallback

Provides a failure-handling mechanism, called a fallback, for an encoded input byte sequence that cannot be converted to an output character. The fallback emits a user-specified replacement string instead of a decoded input byte sequence. This class cannot be inherited.
DecoderReplacementFallbackBuffer

Represents a substitute output string that is emitted when the original input byte sequence cannot be decoded. This class cannot be inherited.
Encoder

Converts a set of characters into a sequence of bytes.
EncoderExceptionFallback

Provides a failure-handling mechanism, called a fallback, for an input character that cannot be converted to an output byte sequence. The fallback throws an exception if an input character cannot be converted to an output byte sequence. This class cannot be inherited.
EncoderExceptionFallbackBuffer

Throws EncoderFallbackException when an input character cannot be converted to an encoded output byte sequence. This class cannot be inherited.
EncoderFallback

Provides a failure-handling mechanism, called a fallback, for an input character that cannot be converted to an encoded output byte sequence.
EncoderFallbackBuffer

Provides a buffer that allows a fallback handler to return an alternate string to an encoder when it cannot encode an input character.
EncoderFallbackException

The exception that is thrown when an encoder fallback operation fails. This class cannot be inherited.
EncoderReplacementFallback

Provides a failure handling mechanism, called a fallback, for an input character that cannot be converted to an output byte sequence. The fallback uses a user-specified replacement string instead of the original input character. This class cannot be inherited.
EncoderReplacementFallbackBuffer

Represents a substitute input string that is used when the original input character cannot be encoded. This class cannot be inherited.
Encoding

Represents a character encoding.
EncodingExtensions

Provides extension methods for the encoding types, such as Encoding, Encoder, and Decoder.
EncodingInfo

Provides basic information about an encoding.
EncodingProvider

Provides the base class for an encoding provider, which supplies encodings that are unavailable on a particular platform.
RedactionStringBuilderExtensions

Redaction utility methods.
StringBuilder

Represents a mutable string of characters. This class cannot be inherited.
UnicodeEncoding

Represents a UTF-16 encoding of Unicode characters.
UTF32Encoding

Represents a UTF-32 encoding of Unicode characters.
UTF7Encoding

Represents a UTF-7 encoding of Unicode characters.
UTF8Encoding

Represents a UTF-8 encoding of Unicode characters.

Structs

Rune

Represents a Unicode scalar value ([ U+0000..U+D7FF ], inclusive; or [ U+E000..U+10FFFF ], inclusive).
SpanLineEnumerator

Enumerates the lines of a ReadOnlySpan<T>.
SpanRuneEnumerator

Provides an enumerator for the Rune values represented by a span containing UTF-16 text.
StringBuilder.AppendInterpolatedStringHandler

Provides a handler used by the language compiler to append interpolated strings into StringBuilder instances.
StringBuilder.ChunkEnumerator

Supports simple iteration over the chunks of a StringBuilder instance.
StringRuneEnumerator

Provides an enumerator for the Rune values represented by a string.

Enums

NormalizationForm

Defines the type of normalization to perform.

Remarks

The encoding classes are primarily intended to convert between different encodings or code pages and a Unicode encoding. Encoding.Unicode (UTF-16) encoding is used internally by .NET, and Encoding.UTF8 encoding is often used for storing character data to ensure portability across machines and cultures.

The classes derived from Encoding enable you to choose a fallback strategy, which determines how characters that cannot be encoded into a sequence of bytes, or bytes that cannot be decoded into characters, are handled. You can choose one of the following:

  • Exception fallback. You can choose to throw exceptions on data errors either by using a throwonerror flag that is available in some class constructors or by using the EncoderExceptionFallback and DecoderExceptionFallback classes. If you are concerned about the integrity of the data stream, throwing on an exception is recommended.

  • Replacement fallback. You can use the EncoderFallback and DecoderFallback classes to silently change a character to "?" or to the Unicode replacement character (U+FFFD).

  • Best-fit fallback. This option maps a character in one encoding to a character in another encoding. Best fit fallback is often not recommended because it can cause data loss and confusion, and is slower than simple "?" character replacements. However, for ANSI code pages the best-fit behavior is the default.

The StringBuilder class is designed for operations that perform extensive manipulations on a single string. Unlike the String class, the StringBuilder class is mutable and provides better performance when concatenating or deleting strings.

For more information about System.Text, see How to use character encoding classes in .NET .