c# - Invalid characters in File.ReadAllText

Question

I'm calling File.ReadAllText() in a program designed to format some files that I have.

Some of these files contain the ? (174) symbol. However, when the text is being read, the returned string contains ? (65533) symbols where the ? (174) should be.

What would cause this and how can I fix it?

Answer 1

This is likely due to a mismatch in the Encoding. Use the ReadAllText overload which allows you to specify the proper Encoding to use when reading the file.

The default overload will assume UTF-8 unless it can detect UTF-32. Any other encoding will come through incorrectly.