Encoding.Unicode Property
Gets an encoding for the UTF-16 format using the little endian byte order.
Assembly: mscorlib (in mscorlib.dll)
Property Value
Type: System.Text.EncodingAn encoding for the UTF-16 format using the little endian byte order.
For information about the encodings supported by the .NET Framework and a discussion of which Unicode encoding to use, see Character Encoding in the .NET Framework.
The UnicodeEncoding object that is returned by this property may not have the appropriate behavior for your app. It uses replacement fallback to replace each string that it cannot encode and each byte that it cannot decode with a question mark ("?") character. Instead, you can call the UnicodeEncoding.UnicodeEncoding(Boolean, Boolean, Boolean) constructor to instantiate a little endian UnicodeEncoding object whose fallback is either an EncoderFallbackException or a DecoderFallbackException, as the following example illustrates.
Imports System.Text Module Example Public Sub Main() Dim bytes() As Byte = { &h20, &h00, &h01, &hD8, &h68, &h00, &hA7, &h00} Dim enc As Encoding = New UnicodeEncoding(False, True, True) Try Dim value As String = enc.GetString(bytes) Console.WriteLine() Console.WriteLine("'{0}'", value) Catch e As DecoderFallbackException Console.WriteLine("Unable to decode {0} at index {1}", ShowBytes(e.BytesUnknown), e.Index) End Try End Sub Private Function ShowBytes(bytes As Byte()) As String Dim returnString As String = Nothing For Each byteValue In bytes returnString += String.Format("0x{0:X2} ", byteValue) Next Return returnString.Trim() End Function End Module ' The example displays the following output: ' Unable to decode 0x01 0xD8 at index 4
The following example determines the number of bytes required to encode a character array, encodes the characters, and displays the resulting bytes.
Imports System Imports System.Text Imports Microsoft.VisualBasic Public Class SamplesEncoding Public Shared Sub Main() ' 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(&H0306), ChrW(&H01FD), ChrW(&H03B2), ChrW(&HD8FF), ChrW(&HDCFF)} ' Get different encodings. Dim u7 As Encoding = Encoding.UTF7 Dim u8 As Encoding = Encoding.UTF8 Dim u16LE As Encoding = Encoding.Unicode Dim u16BE As Encoding = Encoding.BigEndianUnicode Dim u32 As Encoding = Encoding.UTF32 ' Encode the entire array, and print out the counts and the resulting bytes. PrintCountsAndBytes(myChars, u7) PrintCountsAndBytes(myChars, u8) PrintCountsAndBytes(myChars, u16LE) PrintCountsAndBytes(myChars, u16BE) PrintCountsAndBytes(myChars, u32) End Sub 'Main Public Shared Sub PrintCountsAndBytes(chars() As Char, enc As Encoding) ' Display the name of the encoding used. Console.Write("{0,-30} :", enc.ToString()) ' Display the exact byte count. Dim iBC As Integer = enc.GetByteCount(chars) Console.Write(" {0,-3}", iBC) ' Display the maximum byte count. Dim iMBC As Integer = enc.GetMaxByteCount(chars.Length) Console.Write(" {0,-3} :", iMBC) ' Encode the array of chars. Dim bytes As Byte() = enc.GetBytes(chars) ' Display all the encoded bytes. PrintHexBytes(bytes) End Sub 'PrintCountsAndBytes Public Shared Sub PrintHexBytes(bytes() As Byte) If bytes Is Nothing OrElse bytes.Length = 0 Then Console.WriteLine("<none>") Else Dim i As Integer For i = 0 To bytes.Length - 1 Console.Write("{0:X2} ", bytes(i)) Next i Console.WriteLine() End If End Sub 'PrintHexBytes End Class 'SamplesEncoding 'This code produces the following output. ' 'System.Text.UTF7Encoding : 18 23 :7A 61 2B 41 77 59 42 2F 51 4F 79 32 50 2F 63 2F 77 2D '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 'System.Text.UTF32Encoding : 24 32 :7A 00 00 00 61 00 00 00 06 03 00 00 FD 01 00 00 B2 03 00 00 FF FC 04 00
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