Can't get this code to display £ chars

I have a simple text file created with notepad and I am trying to load it into a textbox with this code:

VB Code:

If ofd.ShowDialog = DialogResult.OK Then
            If File.Exists(ofd.FileName) Then
 
                Dim sr As StreamReader = New StreamReader(ofd.FileName)
                Try
                    txtOriginal.Text = sr.ReadToEnd
                Catch ex As Exception
                    MessageBox.Show("Could not load that file: " & ex.Message, "Censor", MessageBoxButtons.OK)
                Finally
                    'tidy up a bit
                    txtOriginal.SelectionLength = 0
                    sr.Close()
                End Try
            End If
        End If

My file has some "£" (British Pounds Sterling symbol, (Shift + 3) on most keyboards.

The whole file loads ok except for the sterling signs. What gives? If I go out of my way to make it work, save the file in unicode, and try again it works OK, but not all of my files will be in unicode).

I'm pretty sure it should show EVERY single printable char in the file (regardless of its encoding), in the textbox, yet this is not the case.

Shift + 3 = # on my keyboard

Actually I don't think I have £ on my keyboard at all. The closest thing I have is &. I can probably find it by holding ctrl or alt and some numbers but I'm not sure.

Anyway you can apply different encoding to the streamreader when you use it. This worked for me:

Dim sr As StreamReader = New StreamReader(ofd.FileName, System.Text.Encoding.UTF7)

I just changed that line in your code by adding the System.Text.Encoding.UTF7 and it should the £ after that.

hehe... I tried everything except UTF7... figuring UTF8 must be just a more-feature rich encoding...

So how do I know at runtime what the encoding will be? it could be ANY kind of file imaginable.

:(

I don't know much about Encoding but I don't see why you'd need to know what encoding was used for the file. To read the character you want I think you'll need to Read it using the UTF7 encoding regardless of what it was written in. I can still read files in other encodings it just changes how certain characters are interpeted. Try it and see what happens.

I have tried to open several files in this way. The text for some characters is non-displayable, and the ASC code for them all is 63 ("?") though the characters are not question marks and are not the same character.

It is causing me a problem because these characters in the file are part of the delimiter that separates data. I cannot split the text over the delimiter because VB.Net doesn't compare it correctly, whether I use the Mid() to compare a portion of the text string itself, or type in chr(63) for these characters as the splitter. It won't work.

Any thoughts?

also, if I paste the delimiter string into the VB code myself, and save, I'll get an error message that some chars won't be saved, then the chars in question will become little boxes in the source code. But then when I run the app, it splits the text correctly!

Problem is each file has a unique delimiter, located at the same position in the file (to define it) and I have to be able to get that code into the text and have it compare correctly in order to split the data over it.