I'm reading metadata from specific bytes in files but the results I get have no encoding. I would like to encode them to Encoding.Default for readability.
How do I convert either full Unicode string or at least a single char?
C# .NET 3.5
5 Answers
You don't encode bytes to a particular encoding - you decode them from the original encoding. You have to use the right encoding to use - you can't just pick it arbitrarily.
Do these bytes actually represent text data? If so, what encoding do the already use? This should be part of the file format.
If they're not actually encoded text, but you want a reliable text representation of arbitrary binary data, use Convert.ToBase64String.
Comments
var myString = System.Text.Encoding.Unicode.GetString(myByteArray);
Would that work?
1 Comment
Hans Passant
Probably not, utf-16 isn't very likely. Could happen though.
Have a look at the namespace System.Text.Encoding :)
Comments
use somthing like this
System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetChars(pass your byte array here)
Comments
It will be something like this:
string s = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(bytesToGetStringFrom, 0, bytesToGetStringFrom.Length);
There are "encodings" other than UTF8.
1 Comment
Gregory A Beamer
Noticing Jon's comment, it is decoding, which is why "encoding" is in quotes.