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I have an ASCII-extended txt file and i need to convert it to a byte array. The problem is that the Null char and the space are decoded with the same 0x20 value. How I can discriminate between these cases? The file is created by a serial logger hardware that the saves the bytes exchanged on the serial port in a ASCII extended txt file. Here is the console app code:

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Encoding enc = Encoding.GetEncoding(1252);
        byte[] byteArray;

        string filePath = "C:\\Log.txt";
        if (File.Exists(filePath))
        {
            StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(filePath, enc);
            string fileString = sr.ReadToEnd();
            if (fileString.Length > 0)
            {
                byteArray = enc.GetBytes(fileString);
                for (int i = 0; i < fileString.Length; i++)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine(fileString[i] + byteArray[i].ToString("X2"));
                }
            }
            else
            {
                Console.WriteLine("File is empty");
            }
        }
        else {
            Console.WriteLine("File " + filePath +" does not exit");            
        }
        Console.WriteLine("Press any key to stop...");
        Console.ReadKey();

    }
}
Belkis Morgalo
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    This sounds unlikely - can you provide a short but *complete* program demonstrating the problem? (A console app would be ideal - and just hard-coding the bytes in the program would be appropriate.) – Jon Skeet Feb 19 '14 at 11:53
  • I modified my original question to include a full console program. – Belkis Morgalo Feb 19 '14 at 12:31
  • But that's still opening a file - which means we can't reproduce it without having that file. That's why I was suggesting hard-coding the bytes. Note that "ASCII extended" isn't a single encoding name; there are lots of encodings that are 8-bit extensions of ASCII. Are you sure this really uses CP-1252? Also note that to see the *actual* bytes in the file, you'd be better off using a stream, rather than decoding the bytes as text and then re-encoding them to bytes. – Jon Skeet Feb 19 '14 at 12:34
  • I really not sure about the encoding that uses the logger because it only is specified as "Ascii". After trying with many code pages this one(1252) returned the best result. All the bytes are decoded fine except the null character. – Belkis Morgalo Feb 19 '14 at 12:51
  • Are you actually trying to get *bytes* out, or characters? If you want bytes, just don't use `StreamReader` at all. Having re-read the question, I think I can answer it without actually seeing all the rest... – Jon Skeet Feb 19 '14 at 12:52

1 Answers1

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I have an ASCII-extended txt file and i need to convert it to a byte array.

Then don't go via text at all. If you just want to grab the bytes within a file, that's really easy:

byte[] data = File.ReadAllBytes(filePath);

Any time you find yourself decoding bytes to get to text, and then encoding that text with the same encoding to get at the bytes, you should be asking yourself whether you really need that text conversion in the first place.

Jon Skeet
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  • I tried this option also and got the same result (null character decoded as 0x20) – Belkis Morgalo Feb 19 '14 at 13:02
  • @BelkisMorgalo: There's no "decoding" in this case - if you're seeing a value of 0x20, then that's what's in the file. I suggest you use a binary file editor (e.g. Free Hex Editor Neo) to validate that. – Jon Skeet Feb 19 '14 at 13:13
  • I tried again with a new file created by the logger and it worked correctly. It seems like i modified by error the file with the testing of the different types of coding and the further processing of the file . Good tool the Free Hex Editor Neo, thanks. Thanks for your time. – Belkis Morgalo Feb 19 '14 at 14:11