Setting a C# Properties.Settings value to spaces only fails

Question

It seems that the user.config file for Properties.Settings can handle an empty string value correctly using a <value /> tag, but a value consisting of one ore more spaces only, (for example "    ") does not get stored as...

    <value>    </value>

but rather as...

     <value>
     </value>

and thus includes a CRLF and 'indentation' spaces.

How do I save a setting of one or more space characters?

Answer 1

If the white-spaces are important use CDATA:

<value><![CDATA[    ]]></value>

Answer 2

Thanks for these suggestions, but neither solves the issue. Using CDATA means that the next time the property is loaded into the program (eg. string prop = Properties.Settings.Default.MyProp), you get the CDATA string (eg. prop is now "<![CDATA..."). The same thing happens if using  . Incidentally, the P.S.D.Save() auto-converts &, <, and > to &, <, and > entities.

Basically string (and char) settings are saved and restored correctly if they are EITHER null OR contain at least one non-space character, but a string of one or more spaces (or a char of one space) is NOT saved correctly.

This issue arose with a program which allows the user to set a string to be used as a line-indentation prefix ( eg. "----", " ", etc.). I have since altered the program to avoid this space-string bug, but it seems to me that a string of spaces should still be a perfectly valid "property"!

Answer 3

For others which will looking for how to save 'SPACE' in config...

You can simple use it's decimal value from ASCII table (http://www.asciitable.com/). So for space character it's value 32. Some examples...:

EXAMPLE 1:

Save single space in App.config

config section:

<setting name="OneSpaceString" serializeAs="String">
    <value>32</value>
</setting>

Application section:

char space = Convert.ToChar(int.Parse(Properties.Settings.Default.OneSpaceString));
string stringSpace = space.ToString();

EXAMPLE 2:

Save multi space string in config (there is a lot of ways how to do it, but for example...)

Config section

<setting name="MultiSpaceString" serializeAs="String">
    <value>32;32;32;32</value>
</setting>

Application section:

char[] spaces = Properties.Settings.Default.MultiSpaceString.GetCharsByDecimal(new char[] { ';' });
string stringSpaces = string.Join(string.Empty, spaces);

//Extension method for getting chars by decimal from our string
public static char[] GetCharsByDecimal(this string inputString, char[] delimiters)
    {
        int[] charsDecimals = inputString.Split(delimiters, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries).Select(s => int.Parse(s)).ToArray();
        char[] resultChars = new char[charsDecimals.Length];

        for (int i = 0; i < charsDecimals.Length; i++)
        {
            resultChars[i] = Convert.ToChar(charsDecimals[i]);
        }

        return resultChars;
    }

//Or safer variant of our extension method
public static char[] GetCharsByDecimal(this string inputString)
    {
        int[] charsDecimals = Regex.Split(inputString, @"\D+").Select(s => int.Parse(s)).ToArray();
        char[] resultChars = new char[charsDecimals.Length];

        for (int i = 0; i < charsDecimals.Length; i++)
        {
            resultChars[i] = Convert.ToChar(charsDecimals[i]);
        }

        return resultChars;
    }

EXAMPLE 3:

Save delimiters (including space) in config

Config section

<setting name="Delimiters" serializeAs="Xml">
                <value>
                    <ArrayOfString xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
                        xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
                        <string>59</string>
                        <string>44</string>
                        <string>9</string>
                        <string>45</string>
                        <string>124</string>
                        <string>32</string>
                    </ArrayOfString>
                </value>
            </setting>

Application section

char[] delimiters = Properties.Settings.Default.Delimiters.Cast<string>().Select(s => Convert.ToChar(int.Parse(s))).ToArray();