C# Effective way to find any file's Encoding

Question

Hello.

Yes is a most frequent question, and this matter is vague for me and since i don't now much about it.

But i would like a very precise way to find a files Encoding. So precise as Notepad++ is.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I'd try the following steps:

1) Check if there is a Byte Order Mark

2) Check if the file is valid UTF8

3) Use the local "ANSI" codepage (ANSI as Microsoft defines it)

Step 2 works because most non ASCII sequences in codepages other that UTF8 are not valid UTF8.

Answer 2

Since you reference notepad++ I'll assume you mean text files.

There is built-in support in the framework:

// detectEncodingFromByteOrderMarks=true
using (var r = new StreamReader(fileName, true)) 
{
   var e = r.CurrentEncoding;
}