3.0. Introduction
It would be very rare to create an entire application without using a single
string. Strings help make sense of the seemingly random jumble of binary data
that applications use to accomplish a task. They appear in all facets of
application development from the smallest system utility to large enterprise
services. Their value is so apparent that more and more connected systems are
leaning toward string data within their communication protocols by utilizing
the Extensible Markup Language (XML) rather than the more cumbersome
traditional transmission of large binary data. This book uses strings
extensively to examine the internal contents of variables and the results of
program flow using Framework Class Libraries (FCL) methods such as Console.WriteLine
and MessageBox.Show.
In this chapter, you will learn how to take advantage of the rich support for
strings within the .NET Framework and the C# language. Coverage includes ways
to manipulate string contents, programmatically inspect strings and their
character attributes, and optimize performance when working with string
objects. Furthermore, this chapter uncovers the power of regular expressions
and how they allow you to effectively parse and manipulate string data. After
reading this chapter, you will be able to use regular expressions in a variety
of different situations where their value is apparent.