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Asked: 2026-05-28T13:28:06+00:00

My question is simple: Are strings in .net encoding agnostic? I ask this because

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My question is simple: Are strings in .net encoding agnostic?

I ask this because when I ingest an xml file that I know was encoded with some windows-1252 code page elements (i.e smart quotes), in the debugger viewing the string that is holding my xml seems to want to resolve the single “smart quote” to a triangle with a question mark in it. This makes me wonder if .NET is asserting that the string that is holding my XML is UTF8 and therefore cannot resolve the difference.

This is a problem, if so, because if the string gets converted then my webservice that is meant to scrub the windows smart quotes from my text will fail because it doesn’t recognize the triangle/question-mark-thingy.

Please help.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Strings are always UTF-16. Any incoming or outgoing data must be converted to/from that encoding.

    If you use a proper XML reading library, it will most likely handle it for you, as long as the XML has the appropriate XML prolog (but Windows-1252 support is not required for compliance with the XML specification).

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