How can I limit the number of characters for a console input? C#

Question

Basically I want 200 characters maximum to come up in Console.ReadLine() for user input before characters start being suppressed. I want it like TextBox.MaxLength except for

Answer 1

If you can use Console.Read(), you can loop through until you reach the 200 characters or until an enter key is entered.

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
int i, count = 0;

while ((i = Console.Read()) != 13)   // 13 = enter key (or other breaking condition)
{
    if (++count > 200)  break;
    sb.Append ((char)i);
}

EDIT

Turns out that Console.ReadKey() is preferred to Console.Read().

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/471w8d85.aspx

Answer 2

There is no way to limit the text entered into ReadLine. As the MSDN article explains,

A line is defined as a sequence of characters followed by a carriage return (hexadecimal 0x000d), a line feed (hexadecimal 0x000a), or the value of the Environment.NewLine

What you can do, is use ReadKey in a loop that does not allow going over 200, and breaks if the user keys Environment.NewLine.