C#: how to get first char of a string?

Question

Can the first char of a string be retrieved by doing the following?

MyString.ToCharArray[0]

Answer 1

Just MyString[0]. This uses the String.Chars indexer.

Answer 2

Mystring[0] should be enough

Answer 3

Or you can to this

MyString[0];

Answer 4

I think you are looking for this MyString.ToCharArray()[0]

:)

But you can use MyString[0] too.

Answer 5

The difference between MyString[0] and MyString.ToCharArray()[0] is that the former treats the string as a read-only array, while ToCharArray() creates a new array. The former will be quicker (along with easier) for almost anything where it will work, but ToCharArray can be necessary if you have a method that needs to accept an array, or if you want to change the array.

If the string isn't known to be non-null and non-empty you could do:

string.IsNullOrEmpty(MyString) ? null : (char?)MyString[0]

which returns a char? of either null or the first character in the string, as appropriate.