Arrow Character Issue - html

Question

I receive excel files in a specified folder for inventory upload. When these upload my system is throwing an error of invalid InventoryId. The last row of data comes with an arrow character that when copied and pasted shows a blank space.
Does anyone know what this right arrow character is?
It is not HTML, ASCII, or Unicode.
I need to create a validation on that character not to bring the row if this is present.

Answer 1

You could do something like the following to remove the Unicode characters.
Dim Str As String = "My Stȟring of ChaǕracters"
Str = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(Str, "[^\u0000-\u007F]", "")
or if you wanted to identify Strings then do something
Dim Str As String = "My String of Characters"
Dim UniCodeCollection As System.Text.RegularExpressions.MatchCollection = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Matches(Str, "[^\u0000-\u007F]")
If UniCodeCollection.Count > 0 Then
'Add code to do somthing here
End If

Answer 2

As the right-arrow character has been passed via a string, it must be a Unicode character.
If the program into which you paste the suspect character is not capable of displaying it, e.g. it is using a font without a visible representation of it, then it may well appear as a blank.
You need to track down what the code is for the character.
The character will probably be able to be shown in Visual Studio, so copy-and-paste the offending string in place of "Crème brûlée →" in the following code and examine the output for anything which stands out:
Module Module1
Sub Main()
Dim s = "Crème brûlée →"
For i = 0 To s.Length - 1
Console.WriteLine(AscW(s(i)))
Next
Console.ReadLine()
End Sub
End Module
Outputs:
67
114
232
109
101
32
98
114
251
108
233
101
32
8594
In the above, 8594 (which is &H2192) stands out as being very different. You now just need to check if s.IndexOf(ChrW(8594)) >= 0, which indicates that the character is in the string.

Answer 3

Solved the issue!
What I did was find what the Character was using the following code:
AscW(CurrentRecord(0).ToString) = Variable
Once I found what the character was I used the same line in an if statement to solve the issue. See Below.
If Not AscW(CurrentRecord(0).ToString) = "26" Then
If Not CurrentRecord(0).ToString = "InventoryId" Then
NewRow("InventoryId") = CurrentRecord(0)
NewRow("Quantity") = CurrentRecord(1)
NewRow("CostCentre") = CurrentRecord(2)
NewRow("UsageDate") = CurrentRecord(3)
InventoryLoad.Tables(0).Rows.Add(NewRow)
NewRow = InventoryLoad.Tables("Load").NewRow
End If
ElseIf AscW(CurrentRecord(0).ToString) = "26" Then
Else
CommonFunctions.ErrorEmail("ProductId " & CurrentRecord(0).ToString & " was not recognized", "LoadInventory - ProductId")
End If