How do I truncate a string while converting to bytes in C#?

Question

I would like to put a string into a byte array, but the string may be too big to fit. In the case where it's too large, I would like to put as much of the string as possible into the array. Is there an efficient way to find out how many characters will fit?

Answer 1

In order to truncate a string to a UTF8 byte array without splitting in the middle of a character I use this:

static string Truncate(string s, int maxLength) {
    if (Encoding.UTF8.GetByteCount(s) <= maxLength)
        return s;
    var cs = s.ToCharArray();
    int length = 0;
    int i = 0;
    while (i < cs.Length){
        int charSize = 1;
        if (i < (cs.Length - 1) && char.IsSurrogate(cs[i]))
            charSize = 2;
        int byteSize = Encoding.UTF8.GetByteCount(cs, i, charSize);
        if ((byteSize + length) <= maxLength){
            i = i + charSize;
            length += byteSize;
        }
        else
            break;
    }
    return s.Substring(0, i);
}

The returned string can then be safely transferred to a byte array of length maxLength.