How to Split an ANSI string with unknown characters returned from OpenVMS in C#

Question

I have a method that I've written in C# that connects to OpenVMS, runs a command and then returns the output.

One of the DCL procedures it runs returns a "form" in the form of a string which has all sorts of ANSI encoding in it.

What I wish to do is to split the returned string into an array based on the ANSI escape character as a delimiter so that I can further sort it and build a display later on.

The problem i'm having is the escape character doesn't look like its being recognized. When I inspect the string in visual studio I can see the standard ANSI formatting with an arrow pointing left that looks like this: ← between each entry. This is the escape character.

If I paste the same string into notepad++ it shows up as ESC.

I've tried doing a split on the string with \033 being the delimiter, but that didn't work, I've also tried pasting the ESC character into a variable but it simply pastes an empty space.

So I'm wondering how do I find out what character code this escape character is using so that I can use it in my split.

Id post a screenshot but I don't have the rep to do that apparently.

edit: this is whats being returned:

[02;27HDIVIDEND SETUP       11:25   Mon, 21 Jul 2014[04;05HCurrent attach point : VOD_TIM[07;05H   Code     Description[07;60HDate       Run

Its not showing up as a character on StackOverflow but if you imagine the character is infront of each of the segments starting with a [

Edit 2: OKay se we've established that the int char code is 27 so the issue now is how do I use that in my split?

Can you post your code? How do you get these strings - as byte array, as string, or what? And if you can determine where the problem character is located just get its number like `Int32 charCode = (Int32)str[problemCharIndex]` or do the same in the Watch window during the debugging `(Int32)str[problemCharIndex]` — Eugene Podskal, Jul 21 '14 at 12:48
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12370812/c-sharp-get-ansi-code-value-of-a-character — fuzzybear, Jul 21 '14 at 12:52
The output is bring returned as a string from a Stream reader which is in a custom library called SSH.NET I shall try your code to see if I can get that character code — Festivejelly, Jul 21 '14 at 12:53
You may have an ansi/Unicode issue too. See [here](http://www.regular-expressions.info/unicode8bit.html) — Bob Vale, Jul 21 '14 at 13:12

VMAtm · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-21T16:46:05.990

0

You can try out the splitting your string via Regex, something like this:

string input = YOUR_STRING_HERE;
string pattern = @"\033";

string[] substrings = Regex.Split(input, pattern);
foreach (string match in substrings)
{
   Console.WriteLine("'{0}'", match);
}

Update:

You can use the \e symbol for the ESC character in Regex in .Net, see the full list of escape characters in Regex here.

edited Jul 21 '14 at 16:46

answered Jul 21 '14 at 12:52

VMAtm

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I think you must remove the `@` before the pattern string. Otherwise it will look for the literal sequence `\033` and not the character with code `033` or am I mistaken here? – Thorsten Dittmar Jul 21 '14 at 13:02
@Thorsten Dittmar In the documentation `@` persists, but I can't say for sure. I'll be appreciated if you can provide some additional info about this. – VMAtm Jul 21 '14 at 13:15
1

Actually ignore what I said it worked! I think the @ sign made the difference! Thanks VMAtm! – Festivejelly Jul 21 '14 at 13:36

How to Split an ANSI string with unknown characters returned from OpenVMS in C#

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