String.ToCharArray Method ()
Copies the characters in this instance to a Unicode character array.
Assembly: mscorlib (in mscorlib.dll)
Return Value
Type: System.Char()A Unicode character array whose elements are the individual characters of this instance. If this instance is an empty string, the returned array is empty and has a zero length.
This method copies each character (that is, each Char object) in a string to a character array. The first character copied is at index zero of the returned character array; the last character copied is at index Array.Length – 1.
To create a string from the characters in a character array, call the String(Char()) constructor.
To create a byte array that contains the encoded characters in a string, instantiate the appropriate Encoding object and call its Encoding.GetBytes(String) method. Some of the standard encodings available in the .NET Framework include the following:
Encoding | Object |
|---|---|
ASCII | |
UTF-7 | |
UTF-8 | |
UTF-16 | |
UTF-32 |
For more information, see Character Encoding in the .NET Framework.
The following example calls the ToCharArray method to extract the characters in a string to a character array. It then displays the original string and the elements in the array.
Module Example Public Sub Main() Dim s As String = "AaBbCcDd" Dim chars() = s.ToCharArray() Console.WriteLine("Original string: {0}", s) Console.WriteLine("Character array:") For ctr = 0 to chars.Length - 1 Console.WriteLine(" {0}: {1}", ctr, chars(ctr)) Next End Sub End Module ' The example displays the following output: ' Original string: AaBbCcDd ' Character array: ' 0: A ' 1: a ' 2: B ' 3: b ' 4: C ' 5: c ' 6: D ' 7: d
The following example defines a string containing the characters that serve as delimiters in a delimited string. It then calls the ToCharArray method to create a character array that can be passed to the Split(Char()) method to separate the delimited string into its individual substrings.
Public Class StringSplit2 Public Shared Sub Main() Dim delimStr As String = " ,.:" Dim delimiter As Char() = delimStr.ToCharArray() Dim words As String = "one two,three:four." Dim split As String() = Nothing Console.WriteLine("The delimiters are -{0}-", delimStr) Dim x As Integer For x = 1 To 5 split = words.Split(delimiter, x) Console.WriteLine(ControlChars.Cr + "count = {0,2} ..............", x) Dim s As String For Each s In split Console.WriteLine("-{0}-", s) Next s Next x End Sub End Class ' The example displays the following output: ' The delimiters are - ,.:- ' count = 1 .............. ' -one two,three:four.- ' count = 2 .............. ' -one- ' -two,three:four.- ' count = 3 .............. ' -one- ' -two- ' -three:four.- ' count = 4 .............. ' -one- ' -two- ' -three- ' -four.- ' count = 5 .............. ' -one- ' -two- ' -three- ' -four- ' --
Available since 8
.NET Framework
Available since 1.1
Portable Class Library
Supported in: portable .NET platforms
Silverlight
Available since 2.0
Windows Phone Silverlight
Available since 7.0
Windows Phone
Available since 8.1