Question

I’m having a weird problem, trying to take a string from a string array
and convert it to an integer.
Take a look at this code snippet:

string date = "‎21/‎07/‎2010 ‏‎13:50";
var date1 = date.Split(' ')[0];
string[] dateArray = date1.Split('/');

string s = "21";
string t1 = dateArray[0];

bool e = string.Compare(s, t1) == 0;        //TRUE

int good = Convert.ToInt32(s);            //WORKING!
int bad = Convert.ToInt32(t1);  //Format exception - Input string was not in a correct format.

Can someone please explain why the conversion with s works, while with t1 fails?

Answer 1

Your string is full of hidden characters, causing it to break. There’s four U+200E and one U+200F

Here’s a clean string to try on:

string date = "21/07/2010 13:50";