C# Character from Unicode

Question

I have a unicode character from the FontAwesome cheat sheet:

#xf042;

How do I put that character into c# ?

string s = "????";

I have tried entering it is as and using a .

Answer 1

Assuming the hex input represents UTF8 encoded string you could have a function that will convert a HEX string:

public static string ConvertHexToString(string hex)
{
    int numberChars = hex.Length;
    byte[] bytes = new byte[numberChars / 2];
    for (int i = 0; i < numberChars; i += 2)
    {
        bytes[i / 2] = Convert.ToByte(hex.Substring(i, 2), 16);
    }
    return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(bytes);
}

and then filter out the unnecessary characters from your input before feeding it to this function:

string input = "#xf042;";
string s = input.Replace("#x", string.Empty).Replace(";", string.Empty);
string result = ConvertHexToString(s);

Obviously you will need to adjust the correct encoding based on the input, because the hex simply represents a byte array and in order to decode this byte array back to a string you're gonna need to know the encoding.

Answer 2

If you just want a lighter version of what Darin posted to convert the hex value to a string containing the unicode position from the private area of the FontAwesome font, you can use this >>

private static string UnicodeToChar( string hex ) {
    int code=int.Parse( hex, System.Globalization.NumberStyles.HexNumber );
    string unicodeString=char.ConvertFromUtf32( code );
    return unicodeString;
}

Just call it as follows >>

string s = UnicodeToChar( "f042" );

Alternatively, you can simply use the C# class with all the icons and loader pre-written here >> FontAwesome For WinForms CSharp