How to remove null value in a string

Question

2.50/5 (2 votes)

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Hello CPs,

Today I am doing Network programming where I suddenly hit a rock. I read a group of bytes from a NetworkStream(Server), but the byte array contains data + null characters attached to it.
Suppose:

C#

byte[] buf = byte[100];
string temp;
NetworkStream ns = GetStream(); //doesnt matter

ns.Read(buf, 0, 100);  //say incoming data is hello
temp = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(buf);

now buf[] value is {n,n,n,n,n,'\0','\0','\0'..... 100th element")
temp value is "hello\0\0\0\0\0....100th element"

Now this is messing with my other calculations.
Is there a method to remove the null characters?
I tried using Trim but it didn't work.

Thanks in Advance if u solve this :)

Posted 3-Feb-14 7:21am

Ashwin2013

Updated 3-Feb-14 7:45am

André Kraak

v2

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5 solutions

Solution 3

Matt's solution is correct for removing null characters from a string (+5 to Matt)

There is something else you may consider here, I see that you are using ASCII enoding which is limited to 128 characters. You may want to check that you are using the correct encoding for your data stream. I couldn't tell the amount of hair pulling and calling upon deities that I have seen from people when attempting to debug their application only to find they were using the wrong encoding scheme.

This remark is from MS:
"The ASCIIEncoding object that is returned by this property might not have the appropriate behavior for your application"
Source: Encoding.ASCII Property [^]

Good luck.

Posted 3-Feb-14 8:40am

S Houghtelin

Solution 5

Thanks you all for your kind reply and time you took to answer my question.

Posted 5-Feb-14 2:29am

Ashwin2013

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Dave Kreskowiak · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-03T09:13:00

Nulls in a byte array are just 0's. I'm suspect of what you're calling "calculations" and how zero values would screw those up.

What nobody has mentioned yet is that NetworkStream.Read() returns an integer, which you're ignoring. That integer is the number of characters read by the Read method and stored in the buffer.

Depeding on what your "calculations" are, you may be better off using that value instead of wasting time replacing a bunch of 0 characters with String.Empty.

Matt T Heffron · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-03T07:59:00

Solution 1

C#

temp = temp.Replace("\0", string.Empty);

will remove the null characters.

Posted 3-Feb-14 7:59am

Matt T Heffron

khurram ali lashari · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-03T08:27:00

Quote:
You can use Linq in case you are using .NET 3.5 or later:

temp = temp.Where(x => !string.IsNullOrEmpty(x)).ToArray();

If you can't use Linq then you can do it like

var tempvar = new List<string>();
foreach (var s in test)
{
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(s))
temp.Add(s);
}
temp = tempvar.ToArray();