How to get the first five character of a String

Knight Wing picture Knight Wing · Apr 11, 2013 · Viewed 461.8k times · Source

I have read this question to get first char of the string. Is there a way to get the first n number of characters from a string in C#?

Answer

Habib picture Habib · Apr 11, 2013

You can use Enumerable.Take like:

char[] array = yourStringVariable.Take(5).ToArray();

Or you can use String.Substring.

string str = yourStringVariable.Substring(0,5);

Remember that String.Substring could throw an exception in case of string's length less than the characters required.

If you want to get the result back in string then you can use:

  • Using String Constructor and LINQ's Take

    string firstFivChar = new string(yourStringVariable.Take(5).ToArray());
    

The plus with the approach is not checking for length before hand.

  • The other way is to use String.Substring with error checking

like:

string firstFivCharWithSubString = 
    !String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(yourStringVariable) && yourStringVariable.Length >= 5
    ? yourStringVariable.Substring(0, 5)
    : yourStringVariable;