String.IsNullOrEmpty is not detecting the Escape sequence NULL \0 in C#

c#, escaping, isnullorempty, null, string

Solution

Your string contains one character `\0`. This character is non-printable, so you don't see it in Watches, but if you add `str.Length` to watches, you will see "1".

So, is your string null? Definitely, no. Is it empty? No, it contains characters. Hence, `string.IsNullOrEmpty` logically results into `false` and it outputs "Non-Empty".

If for some reason you receive strings containing `\0` characters and want to treat it as an empty string, you can just trim `\0` as well:

string str = "\0".Trim(new[] { '\0', ' ', '\t' });
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(str))
{
    "Empty".Dump();
}
else
{
    "Non-Empty".Dump();
}

This will output "Empty".

As suggested by Patrick Hofman, it is better to use `string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace` since it is more suitable for this case and can handle a wider range of white-space, non-visible, BOM characters etc..

Problem

I tried the following if statement but if fails to detect the NULL ``` void Main() { string str = "\0".Trim(); if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(str)) { "Empty".Dump(); } else { "Non-Empty".Dump(); } } ``` Kindly refer the LinqPad snapshot I got the output ``` Non-Empty ``` I don't know how its failing. Kindly assist me.

Original source