How to Convert String to Char in C#

This tutorial will introduce the methods to convert a string to a character in C#.

Convert String to Character With the char.Parse() Function in C#

If we have a string variable containing only a single character in it and want to convert it to a char variable, we can use the char.Parse() function in C#. The char.Parse() function is used to parse a string variable with length 1 to a character variable in C#. The char.Parse() function takes a string variable as a parameter and returns a character. The following code example shows us how to convert a string to a character with the char.Parse() function in C#.

using System;

namespace string_to_char {
  class Program {
    static void Main(string[] args) {
      string str = "S";
      char c = char.Parse(str);
      Console.WriteLine(c);
    }
  }
}

Output:

S

In the above code, we converted the string variable str containing the value S to the character type variable c with the value S by using the char.parse() function in C#. The approach cannot be used with a string variable that contains more than one character.

Convert String to Character With the string[index] Method in C#

The string data type also works like an array of characters in C#. We can get the character at the nth index of the string with the string[n] method in C#. This method can also be used with a string variable that contains more than one character. The following code example shows us how to convert a string variable containing multiple characters to a character variable with the string[index] function in C#.

using System;

namespace string_to_char {
  class Program {
    static void Main(string[] args) {
      string str = "String";
      char c = str[0];
      Console.WriteLine(c);
    }
  }
}

Output:

S

In the above code, we converted the first element of the string variable str into the character variable c with the str[0] method in C#.

Convert String to Array of Characters With the string.ToCharArray() Function in C#

If we have a string variable containing multiple characters in it and want to convert the whole string into an array of characters, we have to use the string.ToCharArray() function in C#. The string.ToCharArray() function takes a string variable as an argument and returns an array of characters containing each character. See the following code example.

using System;

namespace string_to_char {
  class Program {
    static void Main(string[] args) {
      string str = "String";
      char[] charArray = str.ToCharArray();
      Console.WriteLine(charArray);
    }
  }
}

Output:

String

In the above code, we converted all the characters inside the string variable str to the array of characters charArray with the str.ToCharArray() function in C#.

Convert Array of Strings to List of Character Arrays With the LINQ Method in C#

The LINQ integrates query functionality with data structures in C#. The ToList() function of LINQ is used to convert a collection of elements to a list in C#. We can convert an array of string variables to a list containing arrays of characters with LINQ and ToCharArray() function in C#. The following code example shows us how we can convert an array of string variables to a list of character arrays with the LINQ method in C#.

using System;

namespace string_to_char {
  class Program {
    static void Main(string[] args) {
      string[] stringArray = { "First", "Second", "Third" };
      var charArraysList = stringArray.Select(str => str.ToCharArray()).ToList();
      foreach (var charArray in charArraysList) {
        Console.WriteLine(charArray[0]);
      }
    }
  }
}

Output:

F
S
T

In the above code, we converted the array of strings stringArray to a list of character arrays charArraysList with LINQ in C#. We selected each string from the stringArray and converted it to an array of characters with the string.ToCharArray() function. Then, we converted all the character arrays to a list with the ToList() function of LINQ and saved the result into the charArraysList variable. In the end, we printed all the elements inside the charArraysList.