Question

I have a requirement to produce text files with ASCII encoding. I have a database full of Greek, French, and German characters with Umlauts and Accents. Is this even possible?

string reportString = report.makeReport();
Dictionary<string, string> replaceCharacters = new Dictionary<string, string>();
byte[] encodedReport = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(reportString);
Response.BufferOutput = false;
Response.ContentType = "text/plain";
Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment;filename=" + reportName + ".txt");
Response.OutputStream.Write(encodedReport, 0, encodedReport.Length);
Response.End();

When I get the reportString back the characters are represented faithfully. When I save the text file I have ? in place of the special characters.

As I understand it the ASCII standard is for American English only and something UTF 8 would be for the international audience. Is this a correct?

I’m going to make the statement that if the requirement is ASCII encoding we can’t have the accents and umlauts represented correctly.

Or, am I way off and doing/saying something stupid?

Answer 1

You cannot represent accents and umlauts in an ASCII encoded file simply because these characters are not defined in the standard ASCII charset.