Help with a C# conditional statement dealing with Strings

Question

In my attempt at dissecting a bit of C# I am afraid I do not understand either the goal or the logic of this bit of code:

if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(str2) && (Strings.UCase(Strings.Left(str2, 1)) != Strings.Left(str2, 1)))
    {
        return false;
    }

I understand the first part is checking if str2 is "not null", however the second part is coming off a bit flaky. So we UCase the first character of str2, and if it does not equal the first character of str2 (which is NOT "UCase"d), then return "false"?

Maybe I am not missing anything and what I described above is in fact what the code is doing. If this is the case, can we reform this into something else that offers the same result,say for example, check if str2 is uppercase or not? I feel like this is the end goal.

You thoughts?

Answer 1

Yes, you understood the code right.

It looks like something translated from VB using a translation tool, as it's using functions from the VisualBasic namespace. I would rather write it with String methods:

if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(str2) && str2.Substring(0,1).ToUpper() != str2.SubString(0,1)) {
  return false;
}

Or simply getting the first character as a character instead of as a string, and use the IsLower method of the Char class:

if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(str2) && Char.IsLower(str2[0])) {
  return false;
}