Question

I’m trying to convert a xml character entity to a C# char…

string charString = "₁".Replace("&#", "\\").Replace(";", "");
char c = Convert.ToChar(charString);

I have no idea why it is failing on the Convert.Char line. Even though the debugger shows charString as "\\\\x2081" it really is "\x2081", which is a valid Unicode character. The exception is too many characters.

Answer 1

The documentation for ToChar(string) is quite readable:

Converts the first character of a specified string to a Unicode character.

Also:

FormatException – The length of value is not 1.

It will not convert a hex representation of your character into said character. It will take a one-character string and give you that character back. The same as doing s[0].

What you want is:

string hex = "₁".Replace("&#x", "").Replace(";", "");
char c = (char)Convert.ToInt32(hex, 16);