Visual Basic functions in C# 2.0

If you used to be a VB developer, but for some reason are writing C# now, you probably miss a couple of functions. I remember being a little frustrated when I did the conversion from VB.NET to C#. It was March 2005 and I made the shift on the .NET 2.0 beta platform. I couldn’t understand why C# didn’t have some of the simplest functions like IsNumeric() and IsDate(). Also Left(), Right() and Middle() were missing. You could add a reference to the Microsoft.VisualBasic namespace, but that seemed like overkill for a few simple methods.

So I decided to make my own static class in C# 2.0 called VBFunctions that would implement exactly the four methods I was missing so much. This seems pretty basic and it is. But I use these functions again and again and now I have a single place to find them. Here’s the class:

#region Using

using System;
using System.Globalization;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

#endregion

/// <summary>
/// A collection of commonly used functions
/// </summary>
public static class VBFunctions
{

/// <summary>
/// Checkes if a object is numeric or not. It wrappes the functionallity
/// of Double.TryParse method.
/// </summary>
public static bool IsNumeric(object expression)
{
if (expression == null)
return false;

double number;
return Double.TryParse(Convert.ToString(expression, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture), System.Globalization.NumberStyles.Any, NumberFormatInfo.InvariantInfo, out number);
}

/// <summary>
/// Checkes if an object is of type DateTime. It wrappes the functionallity
/// of DateTime.TryParse method.
/// </summary>
public static bool IsDate(object expression)
{
if (expression == null)
return false;

if (expression.GetType() == typeof(DateTime))
return true;

DateTime date;
return DateTime.TryParse(Convert.ToString(expression, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture), DateTimeFormatInfo.InvariantInfo, DateTimeStyles.None, out date);
}

/// <summary>
/// Returns the the left n charecters from a string. It wrappes the
/// functionallity of the Substring() method.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="text">The original string value</param>
/// <param name="length">The length of the text to return from the left</param>
public static string Left(string text, int length)
{
if (text == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("The text cannot be null");

if (length >= text.Length)
return text;

return text.Substring(0, length);
}

/// <summary>
/// Returns the the right n characters of a string. It wrappes the
/// functionallity of the Substring() method.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="text">The original string value</param>
/// <param name="length">The length of the text to return from the right</param>
public static string Right(string text, int length)
{
if (text == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("The text cannot be null");

if (length >= text.Length)
return text;

return text.Substring(text.Length - length);
}

/// <summary>
/// Returns the string sequence between firstCharacter and secondCharacter in a string.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="text">The original string</param>
/// <param name="firstCharacter">The first charecter in the sequence</param>
/// <param name="secondCharacter">The second charecter in the sequence</param>
public static string Middle(string text, string firstCharacter, string secondCharacter)
{
if (text == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException(string.Format("The text cannot be null");

if (!text.Contains(firstCharacter) || !text.Contains(secondCharacter))
return string.Empty;

int start = text.IndexOf(firstCharacter) + 1;
int stop = text.IndexOf(secondCharacter) - 2;
return text.Substring(start, stop);
}

}