Article
11/18/2011

Encoding.Unicode Property

Microsoft Silverlight will reach end of support after October 2021. Learn more.

Gets an encoding for the UTF-16 format using the little-endian byte order.

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

Syntax

'Declaration
Public Shared ReadOnly Property Unicode As Encoding

public static Encoding Unicode { get; }

Property Value

Type: System.Text.Encoding
A Encoding for the UTF-16 format using the little-endian byte order.

Remarks

For a discussion of little-endian byte order, see the Encoding class topic.

For information about the UTFs and other encodings supported by Unicode, see Understanding Encodings.

Examples

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

Imports System.Text

Public Class Example

   Private Shared outputBlock As System.Windows.Controls.TextBlock

   Public Shared Sub Demo(ByVal outBlock As System.Windows.Controls.TextBlock)

      outputBlock = outBlock   

      ' 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)
      Dim myChars() As Char = {"z"c, "a"c, ChrW(&H306), ChrW(&H1FD), ChrW(&H3B2), ChrW(&HD8FF), ChrW(&HDCFF)}

      ' Get different encodings.
      Dim u8 As Encoding = Encoding.UTF8
      Dim u16LE As Encoding = Encoding.Unicode
      Dim u16BE As Encoding = Encoding.BigEndianUnicode

      ' Encode the entire array, and print out the counts and the resulting bytes.
      PrintCountsAndBytes(myChars, u8)
      PrintCountsAndBytes(myChars, u16LE)
      PrintCountsAndBytes(myChars, u16BE)
   End Sub 

   Public Shared Sub PrintCountsAndBytes(ByVal chars() As Char, ByVal enc As Encoding)
      ' Display the name of the encoding used.
      outputBlock.Text += String.Format("{0,-30} :", enc.ToString())

      ' Display the exact byte count.
      Dim iBC As Integer = enc.GetByteCount(chars)
      outputBlock.Text += String.Format(" {0,-3}", iBC)

      ' Display the maximum byte count.
      Dim iMBC As Integer = enc.GetMaxByteCount(chars.Length)
      outputBlock.Text += String.Format(" {0,-3} :", iMBC)

      ' Encode the array of chars.
      Dim bytes As Byte() = enc.GetBytes(chars)

      ' Display all the encoded bytes.
      PrintHexBytes(bytes)
   End Sub 

   Public Shared Sub PrintHexBytes(ByVal bytes() As Byte)
      If bytes Is Nothing OrElse bytes.Length = 0 Then
         outputBlock.Text &= "<none>" & vbCrLf
      Else
         Dim i As Integer
         For i = 0 To bytes.Length - 1
            outputBlock.Text += String.Format("{0:X2} ", bytes(i))
         Next i
         outputBlock.Text &= vbCrLf
      End If
   End Sub 
End Class 
' This example produces the following output.
'    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

using System;
using System.Text;

public class Example
{
   private static System.Windows.Controls.TextBlock outputBlock;

   public static void Demo(System.Windows.Controls.TextBlock outBlock)
   {
      outputBlock = outBlock;

      // 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 u8 = Encoding.UTF8;
      Encoding u16LE = Encoding.Unicode;
      Encoding u16BE = Encoding.BigEndianUnicode;

      // Encode the entire array, and print out the counts and the resulting bytes.
      PrintCountsAndBytes(myChars, u8);
      PrintCountsAndBytes(myChars, u16LE);
      PrintCountsAndBytes(myChars, u16BE);
   }

   public static void PrintCountsAndBytes(char[] chars, Encoding enc)
   {
      // Display the name of the encoding used.
      outputBlock.Text += String.Format("{0,-30} :", enc.ToString());

      // Display the exact byte count.
      int iBC = enc.GetByteCount(chars);
      outputBlock.Text += String.Format(" {0,-3}", iBC);

      // Display the maximum byte count.
      int iMBC = enc.GetMaxByteCount(chars.Length);
      outputBlock.Text += String.Format(" {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))
         outputBlock.Text += "<none>" + "\n";
      else
      {
         for (int i = 0; i < bytes.Length; i++)
            outputBlock.Text += String.Format("{0:X2} ", bytes[i]);
         outputBlock.Text += "\n";
      }
   }
}
/* 
This code produces the following output.
   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
*/

Version Information

Silverlight

Supported in: 5, 4, 3

Silverlight for Windows Phone

Supported in: Windows Phone OS 7.1, Windows Phone OS 7.0

XNA Framework

Supported in: Xbox 360, Windows Phone OS 7.0

Platforms

For a list of the operating systems and browsers that are supported by Silverlight, see Supported Operating Systems and Browsers.

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