What is the text element in the context of the System.Globalization.StringInfo in C#?
I come over the concept of the text elements while learning the C# through the CLR via C#. And it seems that the book reader should clearly understand what the text element is all about. But I am not getting that concept at all.
Also, the documentation is not very verbose on the topic.
I would like to find out the definition of what the text element is.
My guess is that it is just a Unicode character, which is not necessary represented by a single System.Char (because in some cases it can be represented by two System.Char: high and low surrogates). But I am not sure that my guess is correct.
My other guess is that it is a whole word.
The text elements are mentioned in this piece of code in the CLR via C# book:
using System;
using System.Text;
using System.Globalization;
using System.Windows.Forms;
public sealed class Program {
public static void Main() {
// The string below contains combining characters
String s = "a\u0304\u0308bc\u0327";
SubstringByTextElements(s);
EnumTextElements(s);
EnumTextElementIndexes(s);
}
private static void SubstringByTextElements(String s) {
String output = String.Empty;
StringInfo si = new StringInfo(s);
for (Int32 element = 0; element < si.LengthInTextElements; element++) {
output += String.Format(
"Text element {0} is '{1}'{2}",
element, si.SubstringByTextElements(element, 1),
Environment.NewLine);
}
MessageBox.Show(output, "Result of SubstringByTextElements");
}
private static void EnumTextElements(String s) {
String output = String.Empty;
TextElementEnumerator charEnum =
StringInfo.GetTextElementEnumerator(s);
while (charEnum.MoveNext()) {
output += String.Format(
"Character at index {0} is '{1}'{2}",
charEnum.ElementIndex, charEnum.GetTextElement(),
Environment.NewLine);
}
MessageBox.Show(output, "Result of GetTextElementEnumerator");
}
private static void EnumTextElementIndexes(String s) {
String output = String.Empty;
Int32[] textElemIndex = StringInfo.ParseCombiningCharacters(s);
for (Int32 i = 0; i < textElemIndex.Length; i++) {
output += String.Format(
"Character {0} starts at index {1}{2}",
i, textElemIndex[i], Environment.NewLine);
}
MessageBox.Show(output, "Result of ParseCombiningCharacters");
}
}
