Determine a string's encoding in C#

Question

Is there any way to determine a string\'s encoding in C#?

Say, I have a filename string, but I don\'t know if it is encoded in Unicode UTF-16 or the

Answer 1

I found new library on GitHub: CharsetDetector/UTF-unknown

Charset detector build in C# - .NET Core 2-3, .NET standard 1-2 & .NET 4+

it's also a port of the Mozilla Universal Charset Detector based on other repositories.

CharsetDetector/UTF-unknown have a class named CharsetDetector.

CharsetDetector contains some static encoding detect methods:

• CharsetDetector.DetectFromFile()
• CharsetDetector.DetectFromStream()
• CharsetDetector.DetectFromBytes()

detected result is in class DetectionResult has attribute Detected which is instance of class DetectionDetail with below attributes:

• EncodingName
• Encoding
• Confidence

below is an example to show usage:

// Program.cs
using System;
using System.Text;
using UtfUnknown;

namespace ConsoleExample
{
    public class Program
    {
        public static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string filename = @"E:\new-file.txt";
            DetectDemo(filename);
        }

        /// 

        /// Command line example: detect the encoding of the given file.
        /// 
        /// a filename
        public static void DetectDemo(string filename)
        {
            // Detect from File
            DetectionResult result = CharsetDetector.DetectFromFile(filename);
            // Get the best Detection
            DetectionDetail resultDetected = result.Detected;

            // detected result may be null.
            if (resultDetected != null)
            {
                // Get the alias of the found encoding
                string encodingName = resultDetected.EncodingName;
                // Get the System.Text.Encoding of the found encoding (can be null if not available)
                Encoding encoding = resultDetected.Encoding;
                // Get the confidence of the found encoding (between 0 and 1)
                float confidence = resultDetected.Confidence;

                if (encoding != null)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine($"Detection completed: {filename}");
                    Console.WriteLine($"EncodingWebName: {encoding.WebName}{Environment.NewLine}Confidence: {confidence}");
                }
                else
                {
                    Console.WriteLine($"Detection completed: {filename}");
                    Console.WriteLine($"(Encoding is null){Environment.NewLine}EncodingName: {encodingName}{Environment.NewLine}Confidence: {confidence}");
                }
            }
            else
            {
                Console.WriteLine($"Detection failed: {filename}");
            }
        }
    }
}

example result screenshot: