Escape commands / ByteArray to Readable Text C#

Question

I have developed a POS application using C#, for receipt printing, I'm using PrinterUtility library from NuGet, it converts a string to ByteArray, saves it and sends it to a receipt printer to print it. since I don't have a receipt printer, how can I convert the generated file to a readable text? I opened the result file using notepad++ and content is shown in the picture attached

click on the link to view the image

I wonder if this ByteArray result can be rendered as text and shown in a RichTextBox or if there is any way to create a virtual receipt printer that can display the result?

Your help will be appreciated.

Link to the File Click Here To Download The File

Answer 1

Try this simple parser.
It detects SOH (Start of Heading) and GS (Group Separator) escape codes and ignores/skips NUL and ESC code and their connected identifier, if any.
The parsing terminates when all bytes are read or a ETX (End of Text) code is found.

It's a pretty simple nested while loop, so you can easily adapt it, to handle special cases.

The parsed chars are added to a StringBuilder object.

► Note that this handles only ASCII chars. For languages that don't use ASCII chars, you need to build an array of bytes (not an array of chars with a StringBuilder), then use Encoding.[Some Encoding].GetString([Parsed Byte Array]) to decode the array of bytes to a .Net string format.

Use a monospaced Font (Consolas, Courier New etc.) in your RichTextBox.

var bytes = [Your Byte Array];
var charBuffer = new StringBuilder(bytes.Length);

int nul = 0x00;   // NULL char
int soh = 0x01;   // Start of Heading
int etx = 0x03;   // End of Text
int esc = 0x1B;   // Escape
int gs  = 0x1D;   // Group Separator

int pos = 0;
while (pos < bytes.Length) {
    byte byteValue = bytes[pos];
    if (byteValue == soh || byteValue == gs || byteValue == nul) {
        pos += byteValue == gs ? 3 : 1;
        if (pos == etx) break;

        while (bytes[pos] != gs && bytes[pos] != esc) {
            charBuffer.Append((char)bytes[pos]);
            pos += 1;
        }
    }
    pos += 1;
}
richTextBox1.Text = charBuffer.ToString();