C# Help reading foreign characters using StreamReader

Question

I'm using the code below to read a text file that contains foreign characters, the file is encoded ANSI and looks fine in notepad. The code below doesn't work, when the file values are read and shown in the datagrid the characters appear as squares, could there be another problem elsewhere?

StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(inputFilePath, System.Text.Encoding.ANSI);
using (reader = File.OpenText(inputFilePath))

Thanks

Update 1: I have tried all encodings found under System.Text.Encoding. and all fail to show the file correctly.

Update 2: I've changed the file encoding (resaved the file) to unicode and used System.Text.Encoding.Unicode and it worked just fine. So why did notepad read it correctly? And why didn't System.Text.Encoding.Unicode read the ANSI file?

Answer 1

You may also try the Default encoding, which uses the current system's ANSI codepage.

StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(inputFilePath, Encoding.Default, true)

When you try using the Notepad "Save As" menu with the original file, look at the encoding combo box. It will tell you which encoding notepad guessed is used by the file.

Also, if it is an ANSI file, the detectEncodingFromByteOrderMarks parameter will probably not help much.

Answer 2

I had the same problem and my solution was simple: instead of

Encoding.ASCII

use

Encoding.GetEncoding("iso-8859-1")

The answer was found here.

Edit: more solutions. This maybe more accurate one:

Encoding.GetEncoding(1252);

Also, in some cases this will work for you too if your OS default encoding matches file encoding:

Encoding.Default;

Answer 3

Yes, it could be with the actual encoding of the file, probably unicode. Try UTF-8 as that is the most common form of unicode encoding. Otherwise if the file ASCII then standard ASCII encoding should work.

Answer 4

Using Encoding.Unicode won't accurately decode an ANSI file in the same way that a JPEG decoder won't understand a GIF file.

I'm surprised that Encoding.Default didn't work for the ANSI file if it really was ANSI - if you ever find out exactly which code page Notepad was using, you could use Encoding.GetEncoding(int).

In general, where possible I'd recommend using UTF-8.

Answer 5

Try a different encoding such as Encoding.UTF8. You can also try letting StreamReader find the encoding itself:

    StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(inputFilePath, System.Text.Encoding.UTF8, true)

Edit: Just saw your update. Try letting StreamReader do the guessing.

Answer 6

For swedish Å Ä Ö the only solution form the ones above working was:

Encoding.GetEncoding("iso-8859-1")

Hopefully this will save someone time.

Answer 7

File.OpenText() always uses an UTF-8 StreamReader implicitly. Create your own StreamReader instance instead and specify the desired encoding. like

using (StreamReader reader =  new StreamReader(@"C:\test.txt", Encoding.Default)
 {
 // ...
 }

Answer 8

I solved my problem of reading portuguese characters, changing the source file on notepad++.

C#

    var url = System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath(@"~/Content/data.json");
    string s = string.Empty;
    using (System.IO.StreamReader sr = new System.IO.StreamReader(url, System.Text.Encoding.UTF8,true))
    {
          s = sr.ReadToEnd();
    }

Answer 9

I'm also reading an exported file which contains french and German languages. I used Encoding.GetEncoding("iso-8859-1"), true which worked out without any challenges.

Answer 10

for Arabic, I used Encoding.GetEncoding(1256). it is working good.

Answer 11

I had a similar problem with ProcessStartInfo and the property StandardOutputEncoding. I set it for German language console output to code page 850. This way I could read the output like ausführen instead of ausf�hren.