ASCII is not under Encoding

Question

For some reason when I type "Encoding." in to VS all there is UTF8, Equals, and ReferenceEquals. Does anyone know why I can't use ASCII? I need to convert serial data from bytes[] to Char[] or String.

I'm using .net framework 4.1

How do you think, what is ASCII encoding? What symbol in it represented by code 160 ? — Iłya Bursov, Mar 12 '14 at 03:42
I'm just trying to convert data that I got from a serial port to a char or string. — Justin Gardner, Mar 12 '14 at 03:43
Hex is not encoding, if you don't know how data is encoded - you cannot display them, it is just numbers, display them as numbers - it will work — Iłya Bursov, Mar 12 '14 at 03:46
Well they are bytes that I'm reading from the serial port... Does that tell you anything? — Justin Gardner, Mar 12 '14 at 03:47
No, they are bytes = numbers from serial port, you cannot present them as text — Iłya Bursov, Mar 12 '14 at 03:47
Hex is not an encoding http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexadecimal — Mihai Hantea, Mar 12 '14 at 03:48
Fine, Forget about intellisense. What happens when you manually type `Encoding.ASCII` Does that compiles? — Sriram Sakthivel, Mar 12 '14 at 03:48
Well the device I'm getting the data from is trying to send the character "F" through bluetooth though a serial port on my Netduino, and then I need to read that and display it in the program — Justin Gardner, Mar 12 '14 at 03:48
BTW, 7bit ASCII is actually under encoding http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.text.encoding.ascii%28v=vs.100%29.aspx but it does not resolve main problem - you need to select proper one — Iłya Bursov, Mar 12 '14 at 03:48
What do you mean by it is not there? Type it manually and try to compile. — Sriram Sakthivel, Mar 12 '14 at 03:50
I suppose you need to use `System.Text.Encoding.ASCII` and don't forget to include `using System.Text;` — Iłya Bursov, Mar 12 '14 at 03:52
@user1377480 Did you tried? What is the error message? Try it because it will compile even when intellisense doesn't show up — Sriram Sakthivel, Mar 12 '14 at 04:01
Don't you mean you are using the ".Net Micro Framework 4.1"? The reason no one has been able to help is because you left out "Micro". — David, Mar 12 '14 at 04:27
David is right, I do mean .Net Micro Framework 4.1. @SriramSakthivel This is the error: 'System.Text.Encoding' does not contain a definition for 'GetString' and no extension method 'GetString' accepting a first argument of type 'System.Text.Encoding' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) — Justin Gardner, Mar 12 '14 at 21:53
When I try to use this code: string line = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString(bytes); — Justin Gardner, Mar 12 '14 at 21:54

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 12 '14 at 04:23

1

This worked for me when I created a UDP message sender/receiver.

using System.Text;

//converts string/char into ASCII
byte[] encoding = System.Text.ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes("Hello, World!");

//converts ASCII into string
Console.Write(Encoding.ASCII.GetString(encoding));

answered Mar 12 '14 at 04:23

William Lew

485
6
17

I gen an error saying that ASCIIEncoding isn't under System.Text and perhaps I'm missing a resource – Justin Gardner Mar 12 '14 at 21:55
That's odd, ASCIIEncoding seems to be part of mscorlib - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.text.asciiencoding(v=vs.110).aspx – dsolimano Mar 13 '14 at 16:01

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 31 '15 at 19:38

ASCII encoding is subsumed by UTF-8 -- You should not be attempting to use ASCII encoding in network/Bluetooth transport systems. ASCII is a legacy encoding (used extensively in RS-232 communications) and does not use the MSB -- so a value of 160 -- is not possible in ASCII...127 is the maximum value available in ASCII.

You can use ASCII all day long in your sandbox, but -- you cannot use it on a wired/wireless transport.

Use UTF-8 instead.

ASCII is not under Encoding

2 Answers2