C#: Limit the length of a string?

Question

Hi there. I was just simply wondering how I could limit the length of a string in C#.

string foo = "1234567890";

Say we have that. How can I limit foo to say, 5 characters?

Answer 1

You can't. Bear in mind that foo is a variable of type string.

You could create your own type, say BoundedString, and have:

BoundedString foo = new BoundedString(5);
foo.Text = "hello"; // Fine
foo.Text = "naughty"; // Throw an exception or perhaps truncate the string

... but you can't stop a string variable from being set to any string reference (or null).

Of course, if you've got a string property, you could do that:

private string foo;
public string Foo
{
    get { return foo; }
    set
    {
        if (value.Length > 5)
        {
            throw new ArgumentException("value");
        }
        foo = value;
    }
}

Does that help you in whatever your bigger context is?

Answer 2

foo = foo.Substring(0,5);

Answer 3

Strings in C# are immutable and in some sense it means that they are fixed-size.
However you cannot constrain a string variable to only accept n-character strings. If you define a string variable, it can be assigned any string. If truncating strings (or throwing errors) is essential part of your business logic, consider doing so in your specific class' property setters (that's what Jon suggested, and it's the most natural way of creating constraints on values in .NET).

If you just want to make sure isn't too long (e.g. when passing it as a parameter to some legacy code), truncate it manually:

const int MaxLength = 4;


var name = "Jonathan";
if (name.Length > MaxLength)
    name = name.Substring(0, MaxLength); // name = "John"

Answer 4

If this is in a class property you could do it in the setter:

public class FooClass
{
   private string foo;
   public string Foo
   {
     get { return foo; }
     set
     {
       if(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(value) && value.Length>5)
       {
            foo=value.Substring(0,5);
       }
       else
            foo=value;
     }
   }
}

Answer 5

The only reason I can see the purpose in this is for DB storage. If so, why not let the DB handle it and then push the exception upstream to be dealt with at the presentation layer?

Answer 6

You could extend the "string" class to let you return a limited string.

using System;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
   class Program
   {
      static void Main(string[] args)
      {
         // since specified strings are treated on the fly as string objects...
         string limit5 = "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.".LimitLength(5);
         string limit10 = "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.".LimitLength(10);
         // this line should return us the entire contents of the test string
         string limit100 = "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.".LimitLength(100);

         Console.WriteLine("limit5   - {0}", limit5);
         Console.WriteLine("limit10  - {0}", limit10);
         Console.WriteLine("limit100 - {0}", limit100);

         Console.ReadLine();
      }
   }

   public static class StringExtensions
   {
      /// <summary>
      /// Method that limits the length of text to a defined length.
      /// </summary>
      /// <param name="source">The source text.</param>
      /// <param name="maxLength">The maximum limit of the string to return.</param>
      public static string LimitLength(this string source, int maxLength)
      {
         if (source.Length <= maxLength)
         {
            return source;
         }

         return source.Substring(0, maxLength);
      }
   }
}

Result:

limit5 - The q
limit10 - The quick
limit100 - The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.