Char.IsDigit() matches more than just "0" through "9"

Raymond

Warning: .NET content ahead!

Yesterday,

Brad Abrams noted that Char.IsLetter() matches more than just “A”
through “Z”.

What people might not realize is that
Char.IsDigit() matches more than just
“0” through “9”.

Valid digits are members of the following category in

UnicodeCategory: DecimalDigitNumber.

But what exactly is a DecimalDigitNumber?

DecimalDigitNumber

Indicates that the character is a decimal digit;
that is, in the range 0 through 9.
Signified by the Unicode designation “Nd” (number, decimal digit).
The value is 8.

At this point you have to go to the
Unicode Standard Committee
to see exactly what qualifies as “Nd”, and then you get lost
in a twisty maze of specifications and documents, all different.

So let’s run an experiment.

class Program {
  public static void Main(string[] args) {
    System.Console.WriteLine(
      System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Match(
        "\x0661\x0662\x0663", // "١٢٣"
        "^\\d+$").Success);
    System.Console.WriteLine(
      System.Char.IsDigit('\x0661'));
  }
}

The characters in the string are Arabic digits, but they
are still digits, as evidenced by the program output:

True
True

Uh-oh.

Do you have this bug in your parameter validation?
(More examples..)
If you use a pattern like @"^\d$" to validate
that you receive only digits, and then later use
System.Int32.Parse() to parse it,
then I can hand you some Arabic digits and sit back
and watch the fireworks.
The Arabic digits will pass your validation expression,
but when you get around to using it, boom, you throw
a System.FormatException and die.

Raymond Chen

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