Encoding.UTF32 Property

Definition

Gets an encoding for the UTF-32 format using the little endian byte order.

C#
public static System.Text.Encoding UTF32 { get; }

Property Value

An encoding object for the UTF-32 format using the little endian byte order.

Examples

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

C#
using System;
using System.Text;

public class SamplesEncoding  {

   public static void 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)
      char[] myChars = new char[] { 'z', 'a', '\u0306', '\u01FD', '\u03B2', '\uD8FF', '\uDCFF' };

      // Get different encodings.
      Encoding  u7    = Encoding.UTF7;
      Encoding  u8    = Encoding.UTF8;
      Encoding  u16LE = Encoding.Unicode;
      Encoding  u16BE = Encoding.BigEndianUnicode;
      Encoding  u32   = 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 );
   }

   public static void PrintCountsAndBytes( char[] chars, Encoding enc )  {

      // Display the name of the encoding used.
      Console.Write( "{0,-30} :", enc.ToString() );

      // Display the exact byte count.
      int iBC  = enc.GetByteCount( chars );
      Console.Write( " {0,-3}", iBC );

      // Display the maximum byte count.
      int iMBC = enc.GetMaxByteCount( chars.Length );
      Console.Write( " {0,-3} :", iMBC );

      // Encode the array of chars.
      byte[] bytes = enc.GetBytes( chars );

      // Display all the encoded bytes.
      PrintHexBytes( bytes );
   }

   public static void PrintHexBytes( byte[] bytes )  {

      if (( bytes == null ) || ( bytes.Length == 0 ))
        {
            Console.WriteLine( "<none>" );
        }
        else  {
         for ( int i = 0; i < bytes.Length; i++ )
            Console.Write( "{0:X2} ", bytes[i] );
         Console.WriteLine();
      }
   }
}


/* 
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

*/

Remarks

The UTF32Encoding 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 the Unicode REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFE). Instead, you can call the UTF32Encoding.UTF32Encoding(Boolean, Boolean, Boolean) constructor to instantiate a UTF32Encoding object whose fallback is either an EncoderFallbackException or a DecoderFallbackException, as the following example illustrates.

C#
using System;
using System.Text;

public class Example
{
   public static void Main()
   {
      Encoding enc = new UTF32Encoding(false, true, true);
      string value = "\u00C4 \uD802\u0033 \u00AE"; 

      try {
         byte[] bytes= enc.GetBytes(value);
         foreach (var byt in bytes)
            Console.Write("{0:X2} ", byt);
         Console.WriteLine();

         string value2 = enc.GetString(bytes);
         Console.WriteLine(value2);
      }
      catch (EncoderFallbackException e) {
         Console.WriteLine("Unable to encode {0} at index {1}", 
                           e.IsUnknownSurrogate() ? 
                              String.Format("U+{0:X4} U+{1:X4}", 
                                            Convert.ToUInt16(e.CharUnknownHigh),
                                            Convert.ToUInt16(e.CharUnknownLow)) :
                              String.Format("U+{0:X4}", 
                                            Convert.ToUInt16(e.CharUnknown)),
                           e.Index);
      }                     
   }
}
// The example displays the following output:
//        Unable to encode U+D802 at index 2

For a discussion of little endian byte order, see Encoding.

For information about the encodings supported by .NET and a discussion of which Unicode encoding to use, see Character Encoding in .NET.

Applies to

Product Versions
.NET Core 1.0, Core 1.1, Core 2.0, Core 2.1, Core 2.2, Core 3.0, Core 3.1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
.NET Framework 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, 4.5.1, 4.5.2, 4.6, 4.6.1, 4.6.2, 4.7, 4.7.1, 4.7.2, 4.8, 4.8.1
.NET Standard 1.3, 1.4, 1.6, 2.0, 2.1
UWP 10.0

See also