Count of string returns 350 when entering special "a"

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Hi! Wanted to ask, what's wrong with this letter:

a̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍̍

What I have tried:

tried to post message on fb wall with that letter.
fb doesn't allow to post message containing this letter and saying, that fb security blocked this content.
google alse returns 400 error while trying to google this letter.
and if you try to count length of string and input this letter, you will get 350
any ideas what is this?

Posted 14-Mar-16 10:02am

Arlert

Updated 15-Mar-16 1:24am

Sascha Lefèvre

v2

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2 solutions

Solution 1

You should learn to use the debugger as soon as possible. Rather than guessing what your code is doing, It is time to see your code executing and ensuring that it does what you expect.

The debugger allow you to follow the execution line by line, inspect variables and you will see that there is a point where it stop doing what you expect.
Mastering Debugging in Visual Studio 2010 - A Beginner's Guide[^]
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/tools/windows/jdb.html[^]
https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/help/debugging-your-first-java-application.html[^]

I fear the letter is not the problem.
Use the debugger to make sure your code is really doing what you think it does.
Simple test: Log to FB manually and post the message "a", does it work ?

Otherwise, post the code you are using.

Posted 14-Mar-16 11:25am

Patrice T

Comments

Sascha Lefèvre 14-Mar-16 18:06pm

I think you overlooked the peculiarity of that character or whatever it is. It's not a simple "a". And he's apparently not asking because of a programming problem he'd be having with it.

Patrice T 14-Mar-16 18:22pm

I know, but it claim C#, so ..

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Jochen Arndt · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-15T01:24:00

It is returning a length of 350 because the string contains 350 characters.

To verify this, select the text and paste it into an Unicode editor (e.g. with Notepad++ choose File - New, Encoding - UCS-2 Little Endian, and paste the text).
Within Notepad++, it will look like (shortened, there will be 349 dots after the 'a').

a····

Saving the file and opening it with a hex editor shows the code points (again shortened):

FF FE 61 00 0D 03 0D 03 0D 03

where
FEFF = BOM (Byte Order Mark)
0061 = Letter 'a'
030D = Combining vertical line above

So you have a string containg the letter 'a' and 349 combining vertical line above characters. Combining characters are not shown after the preceding one but combined with it. Because you have 349 of them, there will be 349 above the 'a'.

This is an example with one to three of them:

a̍  a̍̍  a̍̍̍

So there is no surprise that your string is not accepted by most forms. The intention of such combining characters is to use them once for the rare cases when there is no already combined Unicode character.