Encoding problem

[srudin]

i understand that a byte array containing information encoded in unicode can (obviously!) not be decoded using, for example, ascii; the result is data "garbage". what i don't understand is why even a temporary conversion fails, or in other words, why the data "garbage" can not be reconverted back to unicode. let me make you an example:

byte[] b1 = byte array containing some unicode data
string s = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(b1);
byte[] b2 = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(s);
why is b2 not = b1?

i guess i'm missing something basic here about how encoding and byte-arrays work.

 

[chiph]

Unicode uses all 256 possible byte values. ASCII encoding only uses 0..127 -- anything 128 and up gets filtered out. This is per the definition of ASCII, which is a 7-bit encoding.

Chip H.


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[JohnYingling]

byte[] b1 = byte array containing some unicode data
If that byte array has UNICODE then you can not use an ASCII encoding. Use Unicode.

string s = Encoding.UNICODE.GetString(b1);

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