In C#, how can I detect if a character is a non-ASCII character?

Question

I would like to check, in C#, if a char contains a non-ASCII character. What is the best way to check for special characters such as 志 or Ω?

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/bcdfb967-aa97-4d26-9daa-d20829f805b9/detect-nonascii-characters — Zaki, Sep 03 '13 at 15:39
you can also use regex http://stackoverflow.com/questions/123336/how-can-you-strip-non-ascii-characters-from-a-string-in-c — Zaki, Sep 03 '13 at 15:40

score 46 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 03 '13 at 15:40

46

ASCII ranges from 0 - 127, so just check for that range:

char c = 'a';//or whatever char you have
bool isAscii = c < 128;

answered Sep 03 '13 at 15:40

musefan

14

And for those who want to be fancy, `bool isAscii = c <= sbyte.MaxValue;`. – Jeppe Stig Nielsen Sep 03 '13 at 16:57

score 37 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 30 '21 at 09:58

37

bool HasNonASCIIChars(string str)
{
    return (System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetByteCount(str) != str.Length);
}

edited Oct 30 '21 at 09:58

Wai Ha Lee

answered Oct 09 '19 at 13:23

Malik Khalil

3

Now that's an interesting way to go about this. Really clever! – Vesk May 22 '21 at 15:38

2 Answers2