C#: String Essential Training

Introduction

• Working with text in .NET
• How to access and clone the GitHub code
• Open the cloned solution in Visual Studio
• Work with Git branches

1. Overview

• .NET, text, and strings
• What is a string?
• Declaring a string variable
• Initialize a string variable
• Immutable: What does that mean in .NET strings?

2. The Char Type

• The char, the building block of a strong
• Initialize a string from a char array
• Get a char from a string
• Use char methods to analyze Unicode data

3. String Basics

• Three ways to work with string literals
• Use escape sequences to add control chars to a string
• Use verbatim string literals

4. Composing Strings

• Combine strings with String.Concat
• Combine strings with the concatenation operator
• Composite formatting with placeholders
• Use C# interpolation for simpler composite formatting
• Use StringBuilder to improve performance
• Use Perf Monitor to examine performance improvements

5. String Methods

• Splitting strings into an array
• Use LINQ to query string array
• Joining an array into a string
• Trim unwanted content from a string
• Work with a subset of a string
• Verify that string contains search characters
• Replace and remove content
• Challenge: Better substring
• Solution: Better substring

6. How Custom Types Format and Parse Strings

• Custom types and string conversions
• How custom types are converted to string with toString()
• How custom types override toString()
• IFormattable and the toString() call order
• Custom formats with IFormattable
• Working with culture-specific formats
• Challenge: Split a string into two numbers
• Solution: Convert a string to the type with parse()
• Add custom filters to parse()
• Prevent exceptions with a tryParse() implementation

7. Formatting

• Formatting data with the built-in numeric formats
• Formatting data with custom formatters
• Apply conditional string formats
• Formatting dates
• Challenge: Ordinal formatting
• Solution: Ordinal formatting

8. Convert and Parse

• The parse() method and the Convert class
• Use tryParse() for better error handing

9. Culture Information

• Why is culture important for strings?
• The CultureInfo class
• Use culture when formatting strings
• Invariant culture and strings

10. Compare and Sort

• How string comparison works in .NET
• Test for equality with String.Equals
• Compare strings with String.Compare
• Sort strings with Array.Sort and LINQ

Conclusion

• Next steps