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Encoding.BigEndianUnicode Property

Gets an encoding for the Unicode format in the big-endian byte order.

[Visual Basic]
Public Shared ReadOnly Property BigEndianUnicode As Encoding
[C#]
public static Encoding BigEndianUnicode {get;}
[C++]
public: __property static Encoding* get_BigEndianUnicode();
[JScript]
public static function get BigEndianUnicode() : Encoding;

Property Value

An encoding for the Unicode format in the big-endian byte order.

Remarks

Unicode characters can be stored in two different byte orders: big-endian and little-endian. On little-endian platforms such as Intel machines, it is generally more efficient to store Unicode characters in little-endian order. However, many other platforms can store Unicode characters in big-endian order.

Unicode files can be distinguished by the presence of the byte order mark (U+FEFF), which is represented as hexadecimal 0xFE 0xFF on big-endian platforms and hexadecimal 0xFF 0xFE on little-endian platforms.

Example

[Visual Basic] 
Imports System
Imports System.IO

Namespace BigEndianExample
   Public Class Class1
      Public Overloads Shared Sub Main()
         ' Read a text file saved with Big Endian Unicode encoding.
         Dim encoding As System.Text.Encoding = System.Text.Encoding.BigEndianUnicode
         Dim reader As New StreamReader("TextFile.txt", encoding)
         Dim line As String = reader.ReadLine()
         While Not (line Is Nothing)
            Console.WriteLine(line)
            line = reader.ReadLine()
         End While
      End Sub
   End Class
End Namespace

[C#] 
using System;
using System.IO;

namespace BigEndianExample
{
   public class Class1 
   {
      public static void Main(string[] args) 
      {
         // Read a text file saved with Big Endian Unicode encoding.
         System.Text.Encoding encoding = System.Text.Encoding.BigEndianUnicode;
         StreamReader reader = new StreamReader("TextFile.txt", encoding);
         string line = reader.ReadLine();
         while (line != null) 
         {
            Console.WriteLine(line);
            line = reader.ReadLine();
         }
       }
    }
}

[C++] 
#using <mscorlib.dll>
using namespace System;
using namespace System::IO;

int main()
{
   // Read a text file saved with Big Endian Unicode encoding.
   System::Text::Encoding * encoding = System::Text::Encoding::BigEndianUnicode;
   StreamReader* reader = new StreamReader(S"TextFile.txt", encoding);
   String* line = reader -> ReadLine();
   while (line != 0)
   {
      Console::WriteLine(line);
      line = reader -> ReadLine();
   }
}

[JScript] No example is available for JScript. To view a Visual Basic, C#, or C++ example, click the Language Filter button Language Filter in the upper-left corner of the page.

Requirements

Platforms: Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows 2000, Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional, Windows Server 2003 family, .NET Compact Framework, Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) Standard

See Also

Encoding Class | Encoding Members | System.Text Namespace

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