How can I detect the encoding/codepage of a text file

by

You can’t detect the codepage, you need to be told it. You can analyse the bytes and guess it, but that can give some bizarre (sometimes amusing) results. I can’t find it now, but I’m sure Notepad can be tricked into displaying English text in Chinese.

Anyway, this is what you need to read:
The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!).

Specifically Joel says:

The Single Most Important Fact About Encodings

If you completely forget everything I just explained, please remember one extremely important fact. It does not make sense to have a string without knowing what encoding it uses. You can no longer stick your head in the sand and pretend that “plain” text is ASCII.
There Ain’t No Such Thing As Plain Text.

If you have a string, in memory, in a file, or in an email message, you have to know what encoding it is in or you cannot interpret it or display it to users correctly.

More Related Contents:

  1. C# Convert string from UTF-8 to ISO-8859-1 (Latin1) H
  2. How can I Convert HTML to Text in C#?
  3. How to convert string to double with proper cultureinfo
  4. Does C# have an equivalent to JavaScript’s encodeURIComponent()?
  5. Mirroring console output to a file
  6. Currency format for display
  7. Graphics.DrawString vs TextRenderer.DrawText?Which can Deliver Better Quality
  8. String format currency
  9. Drawing a Long String on to a Bitmap results in Drawing Issues
  10. .NET (3.5) formats times using dots instead of colons as TimeSeparator for it-IT culture?
  11. Encoding parameters for a URL
  12. System.Net.Mail and =?utf-8?B?XXXXX…. Headers
  13. Formatting Numbers as Strings with Commas in place of Decimals
  14. Return array from function.
  15. Check if the two Files exist in the folder
  16. How do yield and await implement flow of control in .NET?
  17. Difference between RegisterStartupScript and RegisterClientScriptBlock?
  18. How to get Printer Info in .NET?
  19. Populate data table from data reader
  20. Why is try {…} finally {…} good; try {…} catch{} bad?
  21. How to ensure a timestamp is always unique?
  22. Is it possible to create a new operator in c#?
  23. How can I test for negative zero?
  24. How to Change Pixel Color of an Image in C#.NET
  25. Why is this name with an underscore not CLS Compliant?
  26. How do I use a Service Account to Access the Google Analytics API V3 with .NET C#?
  27. Get the calling function name from the called function [duplicate]
  28. DataGridView Image for Button Column
  29. List of exceptions that CAN’T be caught in .NET
  30. Detecting remote desktop connection

Leave a Comment