Introduction:

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a widely-used character encoding standard that represents text in computers and other devices that use text. Each character in ASCII is represented by a unique 7-bit binary number, ranging from 0 to 127. Converting ASCII values to their corresponding characters is a common task in programming, as it allows developers to work with human-readable text. In this blog, we will explore different methods to convert ASCII values to characters in C#.

Method 1: Using the Convert.ToChar method

The Convert.ToChar method is a straightforward way to convert ASCII values to characters in C#. It takes an integer representing the ASCII value as an argument and returns the corresponding character.

using System;

public class Program
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        int asciiValue = 65; // ASCII value for 'A'
        char character = Convert.ToChar(asciiValue);
        Console.WriteLine("Method 1 - Output: " + character);
    }
}

Output:

Method 1 - Output: A

In this method, we first define an integer variable asciiValue and assign the ASCII value we want to convert, which is 65 for the letter 'A'. We then use the Convert.ToChar method and pass asciiValue as the argument. The method returns the character representation of the ASCII value and stores it in the character variable. Finally, we print the result using Console.WriteLine.

Method 2: Using Explicit Casting

Another way to convert ASCII values to characters in C# is by using explicit casting. This involves casting the integer ASCII value to a char data type directly.

using System;

public class Program
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        int asciiValue = 66; // ASCII value for 'B'
        char character = (char)asciiValue;
        Console.WriteLine("Method 2 - Output: " + character);
    }
}

Output:

Method 2 - Output: B

In this method, we again define an integer variable asciiValue and assign the ASCII value we want to convert, which is 66 for the letter 'B'. We then perform explicit casting of asciiValue to a char data type, which converts the integer to its corresponding character representation. The result is stored in the character variable, and we print it using Console.WriteLine.

Method 3: Using Encoding.ASCII

C# provides the Encoding.ASCII class, which can be used to decode ASCII values into characters.

using System;
using System.Text;

public class Program
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        int asciiValue = 67; // ASCII value for 'C'
        char character = Encoding.ASCII.GetChars(new byte[] { (byte)asciiValue })[0];
        Console.WriteLine("Method 3 - Output: " + character);
    }
}

Output:

Method 3 - Output: C

In this method, we create an integer variable asciiValue and assign the ASCII value we want to convert, which is 67 for the letter 'C'. We then create a byte array containing the single byte representation of asciiValue using explicit casting. The Encoding.ASCII.GetChars method converts the byte array to an array of characters, and we access the first element (which is the only element in this case) to get the desired character representation.

Conclusion:

In this blog, we explored three different methods to convert ASCII values to characters in C#. The first method used the Convert.ToChar method, which provides a simple way to achieve the conversion. The second method employed explicit casting, allowing us to directly convert the ASCII value to a character. The third method utilized the Encoding.ASCII class, which provides an alternative approach to decode ASCII values into characters.