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C# Write to file using StreamWriter with ANSI encoding doesn't work

I want to write to text file with ANSI encoding. Code looks like below:
string text = "abc123";
string filePath = "C:\\Data\\MyFile.csv";
using (StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(File.Open(filePath, FileMode.OpenOrCreate), Encoding.Default))
{
sw.Write(text);
}
When I open result file with Notepad++ and click on 'Encoding' button on menu then there is always 'UTF-8 (without BOM)' which I want to avoid.
I tried to choose option 'convert to ANSI', but after save of file and reopen it's still 'UTF-8.
I am stuck with this issue for long time, could anyone give some hint ?

There is no problem with StreamWriter, it is how Notepad++ works. You can easily see it yourself. Just open classic windows Notepad, type "test" and "save as" with ANSI encoding. Then open in Notepad++ - it will recognize encoding as UTF8.

If you export text containing special characters, for example 'é', Notepadd++ will then show the encoding as ANSI instead of UTF-8.
string text = "éçë";

How to convert the encoded file to another with c#

I need to convert file encoding from the default windows encoding to another specific encoding like "IBM864", and then save the file in the new encoding.
please any one can help me.

Read the input file:
string content = File.ReadAllText(inputFilePath);
Write the content with the specified encoding:
Encoding enc = Encoding.GetEncoding(864); //864 is the codepage for IBM864-Arabic (864)
File.WriteAllText(outputFilePath,content,enc);

DOS-CSV import via C# and German Umlaute (Ä,Ü,Ö,ä,ü,ö)

I have the following problem: I have some Excel-sheets and must export them into DOS-CSV format (for some reasons). The consequence is, that the german umlaute (Ä,Ü,Ö,ä,ü,ö) are not exported correctly. In a next step these CSV-files must be imported into a Winform application. Is it now possible to get back the correkt characters Ä,Ü,Ö,ä,ü,ö during the import?

If you choose the DOS-CSV format, Excel is going to encode the document using the 437 codepage (found that here). You can convert it back to UTF-8 using a little bit of code:
Encoding dosEncoding = Encoding.GetEncoding(437);
string original = String.Empty;
using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(#"D:\Path\To\output.csv", dosEncoding))
{
original = sr.ReadToEnd();
sr.Close();
}
byte[] encBytes = dosEncoding.GetBytes(original);
byte[] utf8Bytes = Encoding.Convert(dosEncoding, Encoding.UTF8, encBytes);
string converted = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(utf8Bytes);
I tested this by putting Ä,Ü,Ö,ä,ü,ö into a cell and then saving it as a DOS formatted CSV file in Excel. Looking at the document, Excel turned it into Ž,š,™,„,,”.
Running it through the above code turned it back into Ä,Ü,Ö,ä,ü,ö.

How to set a file's encoding when writing it out in c#?

I'm not full certain I understand file encoding completely. If I write out text to a file in c#, how can I set the encoding type of that file? Maybe it's just I do not understand the full spectrum of file encoding.
using (var sw = new StreamWriter(File.Open(#"c:\test.txt", FileMode.CreateNew), Encoding.GetEncoding("iso-8859-1")))
{
sw.WriteLine("my text...");
}

Your code does exactly that - you're writing out text using ISO Latin 1.
Note that there's nothing in the file itself to specify the encoding, unless you're writing out a file which allows you to specify that. The file is basically just a sequence of bytes. The encoding you're specifying in your code determines how the text you're writing is converted into bytes, that's all.

Use the constructor that accepts an Encoding parameter, which you already do, and set the encoding to the one you like.

Something like this
using (var sw = new StreamWriter(fileName, true, System.Text.Encoding.UTF8,512);
{
sw.WriteLine(""text here);
}

C# Help reading foreign characters using StreamReader

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?

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.

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;

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)
{
// ...
}

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();
}

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.

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

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.