Why does text from Assembly.GetManifestResourceStream() start with three junk characters?
- by flipdoubt
I have a SQL file added to my VS.NET 2008 project as an embedded resource. Whenever I use the following code to read the file's content, the string returned always starts with three junk characters and then the text I expect. I assume this has something to do with the Encoding.Default I am using, but that is just a guess. Why does this text keep showing up? Should I just trim off the first three characters or is there a more informed approach?
public string GetUpdateRestoreSchemaScript()
{
var type = GetType();
var a = Assembly.GetAssembly(type);
var script = "UpdateRestoreSchema.sql";
var resourceName = String.Concat(type.Namespace, ".", script);
using(Stream stream = a.GetManifestResourceStream(resourceName))
{
byte[] buffer = new byte[stream.Length];
stream.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
// UPDATE: Should be Encoding.UTF8
return Encoding.Default.GetString(buffer);
}
}
Update:
I now know that my code works as expected if I simply change the last line to return a UTF-8 encoded string. It will always be true for this embedded file, but will it always be true? Is there a way to test any buffer to determine its encoding?
