CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#stringchar
Tommz
Tommz

Reputation: 3453

String "a" is not equal to Char "a" in C#?

So, I'm having one algorithm for parsing expressions. Also, there are conditional ways to go, whether there are brackets or not. I'm making expression and putting it in string variable, like:

string expression = "6*(3+2)";

and then I let it to go through parsing function. After it was giving me weird result, I went to debug parse function and noticed weird thing going out there: as I was iterating through characters of string from right to left with

for (int i = (expression.Length -1); i>=0; i--) ...

it didn't pass through condition 

if (expression[i].Equals(")")) ...

when in expression[i] was showing on ")", because I saw it on "Locals" part in Visual Studio. Why is that? How I needed to do is:

if (expression[i].ToString() == ")") ...

and then I would be getting correct results. It didn't let me to do expression[i] == ")" because it said that I can't apply "==" operator on char and string.

So, why .Equals didn't pass when it was ")"?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 9102

Answers (1)

Jon Skeet
Jon Skeet

Reputation: 1500385

Why is that?

Characters aren't the same as strings. A string is a sequence of characters. The type of expression[i] is char, not string - so you want to compare it with a char literal:

if (expression[i] == ')')

Note the single quotes (')') instead of the double quotes you were using (")"). Single quotes are used for character literals; double quotes are used for string literals.

Upvotes: 17

Related Questions