Base 36 type for .NET (C#)

• Download source files - 2.65 Kb
• Download demo project - 0.6 Kb

Introduction

I found myself wanting to express a whole host of numbers in as few characters as possible. I came up with the idea of using a Base36 type to represent Base 36 numbers. This scheme is basically an extension to hexadecimal, but whereas hexadecimal stops at 15 (F), Base 36 carries on, with G being 16, all the way up to Z, which is 35. 10 in Base 36 is in fact 36 in Base 10. Base 36 has the benefit that the "numbers" are expressed by characters that are readable to humans, so this can be a good way of passing numerical data over the telephone for instance. Using Base 36, numbers up to 46,655 can be expressed using only 3 characters (ZZZ).

The Code

The code for my Base36 struct is extremely simple, so I won't go into details explaining it; download it and take a look. I've overloaded as many operators as I could, so Base 36 numbers can be added, subtracted, multiplied etc... I've tried to keep the methods of my struct consistent with the way that Microsoft labels type methods. You can instantiate a Base 36 "number" in string format, or from a standard Base 10 number:

Base36 b1 = 104;
//This has the value 104 in base 10.


Base36 b2 = "DSGFDFDZ434";
//This has the value 50,420,080,957,151,344 in Base 10.

The source files should be made into a class library. The demo project should be made into a console application, with a reference added to the class library; this demonstrates my struct in action!

And that's it! The struct seems to work very well, although I'm sure some of the code can be optimised. Good luck!