Finding out Unicode character name in .Net

Question

Is there a way in .Net to find out, what Unicode name certain character has?

If not, is there a library that can do this?

Answer 1

If you use Process Monitor to look at the files accessed by charmap.exe, you'll see that it opens a file named C:\Windows\system32\getuname.dll. This file contains the character names in its resources (actually the resources themselves are in a .mui file in a culture-specific subdirectory).

So all you have to do is get the names from this file, using the LoadString API. I wrote a helper class to do it:

public class Win32ResourceReader : IDisposable
{
    private IntPtr _hModule;

    public Win32ResourceReader(string filename)
    {
        _hModule = LoadLibraryEx(filename, IntPtr.Zero, LoadLibraryFlags.AsDataFile | LoadLibraryFlags.AsImageResource);
        if (_hModule == IntPtr.Zero)
            throw Marshal.GetExceptionForHR(Marshal.GetHRForLastWin32Error());
    }

    public string GetString(uint id)
    {
        var buffer = new StringBuilder(1024);
        LoadString(_hModule, id, buffer, buffer.Capacity);
        if (Marshal.GetLastWin32Error() != 0)
            throw Marshal.GetExceptionForHR(Marshal.GetHRForLastWin32Error());
        return buffer.ToString();
    }

    ~Win32ResourceReader()
    {
        Dispose(false);
    }

    public void Dispose()
    {
        Dispose(true);
        GC.SuppressFinalize(this);
    }

    public void Dispose(bool disposing)
    {
        if (_hModule != IntPtr.Zero)
            FreeLibrary(_hModule);
        _hModule = IntPtr.Zero;
    }

    [DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, SetLastError = true)]
    static extern int LoadString(IntPtr hInstance, uint uID, StringBuilder lpBuffer, int nBufferMax);

    [DllImport("kernel32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, SetLastError = true)]
    static extern IntPtr LoadLibraryEx(string lpFileName, IntPtr hReservedNull, LoadLibraryFlags dwFlags);

    [DllImport("kernel32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, SetLastError = true)]
    static extern bool FreeLibrary(IntPtr hModule);

    [Flags]
    enum LoadLibraryFlags : uint
    {
        AsDataFile = 0x00000002,
        AsImageResource = 0x00000020
    }
}

You can use it like this:

string path = @"C:\Windows\System32\getuname.dll";
using (var reader = new Win32ResourceReader(path))
{
    string name = reader.GetString(0xA9);
    Console.WriteLine(name); // Copyright Sign
}