C# How to replace Microsoft's Smart Quotes with straight quotation marks??

Question

My post below asked what the curly quotation marks were and why my app wouldn't work with them, my question now is how can I replace them when my program comes across them, how can I do this in C#? Are they special characters?

curly-quotation-marks-vs-square-quotation-marks-what-gives

Thanks

Answer 1

According to the Character Map application that comes with Windows, the Unicode values for the curly quotes are 0x201c and 0x201d. Replace those values with the straight quote 0x0022, and you should be good to go.

String.Replace(0x201c, '"');
String.Replace(0x201d, '"');

Answer 2

Note that what you have is inherently a corrupt CSV file. Indiscriminately replacing all typographer's quotes with straight quotes won't necessarily fix your file. For all you know, some of the typographer's quotes were supposed to be there, as part of a field's value. Replacing them with straight quotes might not leave you with a valid CSV file, either.

I don't think there is an algorithmic way to fix a file that is corrupt in the way you describe. Your time might be better spent investigating how you come to have such invalid files in the first place, and then putting a stop to it. Is someone using Word to edit your data files, for instance?

Answer 3

When I encountered this problem I wrote an extension method to the String class in C#.

public static class StringExtensions
{
    public static string StripIncompatableQuotes(this string s)
    {
        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(s))
            return s.Replace('\u2018', '\'').Replace('\u2019', '\'').Replace('\u201c', '\"').Replace('\u201d', '\"');
        else
            return s;
    }
}

This simply replaces the silly 'smart quotes' with normal quotes.

[EDIT] Fixed to also support replacement of 'double smart quotes'.

Answer 4

I have a whole great big... program... that does precisely this. You can rip out the script and use it at your leasure. It does all sorts of replacements, and is located at http://www.codeplex.com/typografix

Answer 5

Try this for smart single quotes if the above don't work:
string.Replace("\342\200\230", "'") string.Replace("\342\200\231", "'")

Try this as well for smart double quotes:
string.Replace("\342\200\234", '"') string.Replace("\342\200\235", '"')

Answer 6

A more extensive listing of problematic word characters

if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2013') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2013', '-');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2014') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2014', '-');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2015') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2015', '-');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2017') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2017', '_');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2018') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2018', '\'');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2019') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2019', '\'');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u201a') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u201a', ',');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u201b') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u201b', '\'');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u201c') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u201c', '\"');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u201d') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u201d', '\"');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u201e') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u201e', '\"');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2026') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace("\u2026", "...");
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2032') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2032', '\'');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2033') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2033', '\"');

Answer 7

How would those escape characters be handled in VB.NET?