Read a file line by line with VB.NET

Question

The following code is used to read a file line by line.

It's just a very early version, so all I want to do is display the string in the immediate window. It's working fine, except that characters such as Ä Ü Ö è à and so on are replaced by a black square with a question mark. According to the documentation, the file reader should be compatible with UTF-8 chars so I don't know what is wrong.

...

    Dim reader = File.OpenText(filetoimport.Text)

    Dim line As String = Nothing

    Dim lines As Integer = 0

    While (reader.Peek() <> -1)
        line = reader.ReadLine()
        If line.StartsWith("<item key=""") Then
            Dim Firstpart As String = Nothing

            Firstpart = line.Substring(11, line.IndexOf(""" value=") - 11)

            Debug.WriteLine(Firstpart)

            lines = lines + 1

            Label3.Text = lines
            Application.DoEvents()
        Else
            Label3.Text = lines
            Application.DoEvents()
        End If

    End While

...

The file is ANSI-encoded, not UTF-8, but the reader uses UTF-8.

Answer 1

Like this... I used it to read Chinese characters...

Dim reader as StreamReader = My.Computer.FileSystem.OpenTextFileReader(filetoimport.Text)
Dim a as String

Do
   a = reader.ReadLine
   '
   ' Code here
   '
Loop Until a Is Nothing

reader.Close()

Answer 2

Replaced the reader declaration with this one and now it works!

Dim reader As New StreamReader(filetoimport.Text, Encoding.Default)

Encoding.Default represents the ANSI code page that is set under Windows Control Panel.