Writing c# source code to files

Question

I'm having a stupid problem. I'm reading some .cs files from disk. Doing lots of regex and other operations on them with a .net program i've made. Then write them back to disc.

The resulting files get the wrong encoding somehow. What encoding are c# source files? And then there is the first byte-order thing, is that needed? Does it get written when i use File.WriteAllText()?

The program changing the files is a simple .net application, and the code is simply

string text = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(fn);
string newText = Regex.Replace(text, regexStr, replaceStr);
System.IO.File.WriteAllText(fn, newText);

The c# files have comments and strings don't seem to be part of the standard codepage.

One of the problematic characters is "ä"

Solution:

this seems to work correctly

string text = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(fn, Encoding.GetEncoding(1252));
string newText = Regex.Replace(text, regexStr, replaceStr);
System.IO.File.WriteAllText(fn, newText, Encoding.GetEncoding(1252));

David Schmitt · Accepted Answer · 2009-11-03 15:05:18Z

2

System.IO.File.ReadAllText(fn) tries to guess the encoding of the input file. This can go horribly wrong.

Visual Studio 2008 creates files by default in UTF-8. Similarly you should try to use UTF-8 where ever possible, by specifying Encoding.UTF8Encoding when writing the files to disk.

edited Nov 3, 2009 at 15:05

answered Nov 3, 2009 at 14:56

David Schmitt

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Fraser · Accepted Answer · 2009-03-25 13:04:39Z

1

By default the files should be encoded with the same code page that is set in the regional settings of the machine. By default this will be 'Unicode (UTF-8 with signature) - Codepage 65001' you can use any code page you wish, for example you could also use 'Western European (windows) - Codepage 1252'.

answered Mar 25, 2009 at 13:04

Fraser

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Comments

Mauro · Accepted Answer · 2009-03-25 13:03:57Z

0

I've written a few code gens in my time and always used ASCII encoding (plain windows text). What language are you using to do the regex ops on the CS files?

answered Mar 25, 2009 at 13:03

Mauro

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