How to deal with non alpha numeric characters asp.net vb?

Question

I am processing a lot of CSV files that have people data and occasionally names are used non-alpha numeric characters like á and those all become � symbols in the datatable. How do i prevent this problem ? I just wanna leave all the names as they are in the file without making any changes.

Thanks,

L

Answer 1

The most common reason for this is that it is actually encoded in ISO-8859-1 and interpreted as UTF-8. For less common reasons, the same principle applies, that is, something is in different encoding that it claims to be.

Answer 2

Change the character encoding in the database or decode it when you read from the DB.

Answer 3

While processing, you need a Reader or something. I suggest you configure it by using a System.Encoding.UnicodeEncoding or UTF32Encoding.