How to decode a Unicode character in a string

Question

How do I decode this string 'Sch\u00f6nen' (@"Sch\u00f6nen") in C#, I've tried HttpUtility but it doesn't give me the results I need, which is "Schönen".

Have you looked at the System.Text.Encoding classes? You might be able to use the UTF-8 encoding to decode the Unicode string content — Trevor Pilley
– Trevor Pilley, Commented Feb 15, 2012 at 23:50

Alexei Levenkov · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-19 00:43:34Z

94

Regex.Unescape did the trick:

System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Unescape(@"Sch\u00f6nen");

_{Note that you need to be careful when testing your variants or writing unit tests: "Sch\u00f6nen" is already "Schönen". You need @ in front of string to treat \u00f6 as part of the string.}

edited Mar 19, 2017 at 0:43

Alexei Levenkov

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answered Feb 16, 2012 at 0:08

M_K

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1 Comment

Bubbles Over a year ago

I know this comment is old but you have fixed my issue with your comment about adding @ before the unicode. Thank you so much.

Alexei Levenkov · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-19 00:52:02Z

4

If you landed on this question because you see "Sch\u00f6nen" (or similar \uXXXX values in string constant) - it is not encoding. It is a way to represent Unicode characters as escape sequence similar how string represents New Line by \n and Return by \r.

I don't think you have to decode.

string unicodestring = "Sch\u00f6nen";
Console.WriteLine(unicodestring);

Schönen was outputted.

edited Mar 19, 2017 at 0:52

Alexei Levenkov

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answered Feb 15, 2012 at 23:44

findcaiyzh

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2 Comments

M_K Over a year ago

Well it shows up as "Sch\u00f6nen" when I output it on the windows phone emulator so it needs to be escaped. The user who answered my question and then deleted his post got the correct answer, I don't know why he deleted it.

Mladen B. Over a year ago

I think you two misunderstood each other :) @findcaiyzh, if you update your example with string unicodestring = "Sch\\u00f6nen"; you'll get the case @M_K is talking about. This scenario is usual when working with JSON result, retrieved from a remote endpoint.

Dmitrii Matunin · Accepted Answer · 2020-11-16 17:39:39Z

1

Wrote a code that covnerts unicode strings to actual chars. (But the best answer in this topic works fine and less complex).

string stringWithUnicodeSymbols = @"{""id"": 10440119, ""photo"": 10945418, ""first_name"": ""\u0415\u0432\u0433\u0435\u043d\u0438\u0439""}";
var splitted = Regex.Split(stringWithUnicodeSymbols, @"\\u([a-fA-F\d]{4})");
string outString = "";
foreach (var s in splitted)
{
    try
    {
        if (s.Length == 4)
        {
            var decoded = ((char) Convert.ToUInt16(s, 16)).ToString();
            outString += decoded;
        }
        else
        {
            outString += s;
        }
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
        outString += s;
    }
}

answered Nov 16, 2020 at 17:39

Dmitrii Matunin

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1 Comment

Cory-G Over a year ago

With the length==4 check, pretty sure this could give false results for something like \uAAAAAAA\uAAAA that has length 4 strings between unicode chars. The core conversion is decent enough to write a parser from, though.

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