BinaryReader in c# reads '\0' between all characters of a string

Question

I am trying to write and read a binary file using c# BinaryWriter and BinaryReader classes. When I am storing a string in file, it is storing it properly, but when I am trying to read it is returning a string which has '\0' character on every alternate place within the string.

Here is the code:

 public void writeBinary(BinaryWriter bw)
 {
     bw.Write("Hello");
 }

 public void readBinary(BinaryReader br)
 {
     BinaryReader br = new BinaryReader(fs);
     String s;
     s = br.ReadString();
  }

Here s is getting value as = "H\0e\0l\0l\0o\0".

[The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)](http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html) — GSerg, Feb 16 '14 at 01:46
You need to account for the character encoding, as @CSerg indicated. All strings in .NET use UTF8 encoding (2 bytes per character), which supports many scripts (Roman, Japanese, Hebrew, etc). — Wagner DosAnjos, Feb 16 '14 at 02:00

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 16 '14 at 01:55

You are using different encodings when reading and writing the file.

You are using UTF-16 when writing the file, so each character ends up as a 16 bit character code, i.e. two bytes.

You are using UTF-8 or some of the 8-bit encodings when reading the file, so each byte will end up as one character.

Pick one encoding and use for both reading and writing the file.

BinaryReader in c# reads '\0' between all characters of a string

1 Answers1