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#)

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

no need for regex. just use encoding...

sOutput = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString(System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(sInput));