How to Split an ANSI string with unknown characters returned from OpenVMS in C#

I have a method that I've written in C# that connects to OpenVMS, runs a command and then returns the output.

One of the DCL procedures it runs returns a "form" in the form of a string which has all sorts of ANSI encoding in it.

What I wish to do is to split the returned string into an array based on the ANSI escape character as a delimiter so that I can further sort it and build a display later on.

The problem i'm having is the escape character doesn't look like its being recognized. When I inspect the string in visual studio I can see the standard ANSI formatting with an arrow pointing left that looks like this: ← between each entry. This is the escape character.

If I paste the same string into notepad++ it shows up as ESC.

I've tried doing a split on the string with \033 being the delimiter, but that didn't work, I've also tried pasting the ESC character into a variable but it simply pastes an empty space.

So I'm wondering how do I find out what character code this escape character is using so that I can use it in my split.

Id post a screenshot but I don't have the rep to do that apparently.

edit: this is whats being returned:

[02;27HDIVIDEND SETUP       11:25   Mon, 21 Jul 2014[04;05HCurrent attach point : VOD_TIM[07;05H   Code     Description[07;60HDate       Run

Its not showing up as a character on StackOverflow but if you imagine the character is infront of each of the segments starting with a [

Edit 2: OKay se we've established that the int char code is 27 so the issue now is how do I use that in my split?

Solution

You can try out the splitting your string via Regex, something like this:

string input = YOUR_STRING_HERE;
string pattern = @"\033";

string[] substrings = Regex.Split(input, pattern);
foreach (string match in substrings)
{
   Console.WriteLine("'{0}'", match);
}

Update:

You can use the \e symbol for the ESC character in Regex in .Net, see the full list of escape characters in Regex here.