FileSystemObject - Reading Unicode Files

Question

Classic ASP, VBScript context.

A lot of articles including this Microsoft one, say you cannot use FileSystemObject to read Unicode files.

I

Answer 1

I think MS does not officially state that it supports unicode because:

1. It does not detect unicode files using the byte-order mark at the start of the file, and
2. It only supports Little-Endian UTF-16 unicode files (and you need to remove the byte order mark if present).

Here is some sample code that I have been using successfully (for a few years) to auto-detect and read unicode files with FSO (assuming they are little-endian and contain the BOM):

'Detect Unicode Files
Set Stream = FSO.OpenTextFile(ScriptFolderObject.Path & "\" & FileName, 1, False)
intAsc1Chr = Asc(Stream.Read(1))
intAsc2Chr = Asc(Stream.Read(1))
Stream.Close
If intAsc1Chr = 255 And intAsc2Chr = 254 Then 
    OpenAsUnicode = True
Else
    OpenAsUnicode = False
End If

'Get script content
Set Stream = FSO.OpenTextFile(ScriptFolderObject.Path & "\" & FileName, 1, 0, OpenAsUnicode)
TextContent = Stream.ReadAll()
Stream.Close