Encoding Class

Article
01/16/2013

[This documentation is for preview only, and is subject to change in later releases. Blank topics are included as placeholders.]

Represents a character encoding.

Inheritance Hierarchy

System. . :: . .Object
System.Text..::..Encoding
System.Text. . :: . .UTF8Encoding

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

Syntax

'Declaration
<SerializableAttribute> _
Public MustInherit Class Encoding

[SerializableAttribute]
public abstract class Encoding

[SerializableAttribute]
public ref class Encoding abstract

[<AbstractClass>]
[<SerializableAttribute>]
type Encoding =  class end

public abstract class Encoding

The Encoding type exposes the following members.

Constructors

	Name	Description
	Encoding	Initializes a new instance of the Encoding class.

Top

Properties

	Name	Description
	UTF8	Gets an encoding for the UTF-8 format.

Top

Methods

	Name	Description
	Equals(Object)	Determines whether the specified Object is equal to the current Object. (Inherited from Object.)
	Finalize	Allows an object to try to free resources and perform other cleanup operations before it is reclaimed by garbage collection. (Inherited from Object.)
	GetBytes(String)	When overridden in a derived class, encodes all the characters in the specified string into a sequence of bytes.
	GetBytes(String, Int32, Int32, array<Byte> [] () [] [], Int32)	When overridden in a derived class, encodes a set of characters from the specified string into the specified byte array.
	GetChars(array<Byte> [] () [] [])	When overridden in a derived class, decodes all the bytes in the specified byte array into a set of characters.
	GetChars(array<Byte> [] () [] [], Int32, Int32)	When overridden in a derived class, decodes a sequence of bytes from the specified byte array into a set of characters.
	GetDecoder	When overridden in a derived class, obtains a decoder that converts an encoded sequence of bytes into a sequence of characters.
	GetHashCode	Serves as a hash function for a particular type. (Inherited from Object.)
	GetType	Gets the Type of the current instance. (Inherited from Object.)
	MemberwiseClone	Creates a shallow copy of the current Object. (Inherited from Object.)
	ToString	Returns a string that represents the current object. (Inherited from Object.)

Top

Remarks

Encoding is the process of transforming a set of Unicode characters into a sequence of bytes. In contrast, decoding is the process of transforming a sequence of encoded bytes into a set of Unicode characters.

The Encoding class is primarily intended to convert between different encodings and Unicode. Often one of the derived Unicode classes is the correct choice for your application.

Thread Safety

Any public static (Shared in Visual Basic) members of this type are thread safe. Any instance members are not guaranteed to be thread safe.

Share via