Unicode Property
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Encoding.Unicode Property

[ This article is for Windows Phone 8 developers. If you’re developing for Windows 10, see the latest documentation. ]

Gets an encoding for the UTF-16 format using the little-endian byte order.

Namespace:  System.Text
Assembly:  mscorlib (in mscorlib.dll)

'Declaration
Public Shared ReadOnly Property Unicode As Encoding

Property Value

Type: System.Text.Encoding
A Encoding for the UTF-16 format using the little-endian byte order.

For a discussion of little-endian byte order, see the Encoding class topic.

The following code example determines the number of bytes required to encode a character array, encodes the characters, and displays the resulting bytes.


Imports System.Text

Public Class Example

   Private Shared outputBlock As System.Windows.Controls.TextBlock

   Public Shared Sub Demo(ByVal outBlock As System.Windows.Controls.TextBlock)

      outputBlock = outBlock   

      ' The characters to encode:
      '    Latin Small Letter Z (U+007A)
      '    Latin Small Letter A (U+0061)
      '    Combining Breve (U+0306)
      '    Latin Small Letter AE With Acute (U+01FD)
      '    Greek Small Letter Beta (U+03B2)
      '    a high-surrogate value (U+D8FF)
      '    a low-surrogate value (U+DCFF)
      Dim myChars() As Char = {"z"c, "a"c, ChrW(&H306), ChrW(&H1FD), ChrW(&H3B2), ChrW(&HD8FF), ChrW(&HDCFF)}

      ' Get different encodings.
      Dim u8 As Encoding = Encoding.UTF8
      Dim u16LE As Encoding = Encoding.Unicode
      Dim u16BE As Encoding = Encoding.BigEndianUnicode

      ' Encode the entire array, and print out the counts and the resulting bytes.
      PrintCountsAndBytes(myChars, u8)
      PrintCountsAndBytes(myChars, u16LE)
      PrintCountsAndBytes(myChars, u16BE)
   End Sub 

   Public Shared Sub PrintCountsAndBytes(ByVal chars() As Char, ByVal enc As Encoding)
      ' Display the name of the encoding used.
      outputBlock.Text += String.Format("{0,-30} :", enc.ToString())

      ' Display the exact byte count.
      Dim iBC As Integer = enc.GetByteCount(chars)
      outputBlock.Text += String.Format(" {0,-3}", iBC)

      ' Display the maximum byte count.
      Dim iMBC As Integer = enc.GetMaxByteCount(chars.Length)
      outputBlock.Text += String.Format(" {0,-3} :", iMBC)

      ' Encode the array of chars.
      Dim bytes As Byte() = enc.GetBytes(chars)

      ' Display all the encoded bytes.
      PrintHexBytes(bytes)
   End Sub 

   Public Shared Sub PrintHexBytes(ByVal bytes() As Byte)
      If bytes Is Nothing OrElse bytes.Length = 0 Then
         outputBlock.Text &= "<none>" & vbCrLf
      Else
         Dim i As Integer
         For i = 0 To bytes.Length - 1
            outputBlock.Text += String.Format("{0:X2} ", bytes(i))
         Next i
         outputBlock.Text &= vbCrLf
      End If
   End Sub 
End Class 
' This example produces the following output.
'    System.Text.UTF8Encoding       : 12  24  :7A 61 CC 86 C7 BD CE B2 F1 8F B3 BF
'    System.Text.UnicodeEncoding    : 14  16  :7A 00 61 00 06 03 FD 01 B2 03 FF D8 FF DC
'    System.Text.UnicodeEncoding    : 14  16  :00 7A 00 61 03 06 01 FD 03 B2 D8 FF DC FF


Windows Phone OS

Supported in: 8.1, 8.0, 7.1, 7.0

Windows Phone

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