Different file sizes C++ to C#

Question

0.00/5 (No votes)

See more:

Hi All, I've just been asked to port some old legacy C++ code to C#, the program is pretty simple - it parses some data from a text file and writes it out to another. All works ok BUT - as part of my testing whenever I do stuff like this I use the file compare function in devenv.exe ( think it used to be called windiff )

devenv /diff file1 file2

and all is good, BUT - If I do a byte by byte comparison it fails as the files are different sizes ( the C# one is 128 bytes larger)
Any ideas guys ? it's not a show stopper I'm just curious.

What I have tried:

Googling and posting on here !

Posted 21-Jun-17 4:32am

pkfox

Updated 21-Jun-17 7:25am

v2

Add a Solution

Comments

F-ES Sitecore 21-Jun-17 10:47am

Do it on a small file then examine the bytes to see what the difference is. It could be a difference in line endings, maybe the C++ uses \n and the c# uses \r\n. We can't see these files and we don't know what the code is doing so there's not a lot of help we can give.

[no name] 21-Jun-17 10:48am

Unicode vs. Ansi vs. MBC?

Peter_in_2780 21-Jun-17 11:32am

old DOS style file with EOF mark (0x1a, ^Z) and padding?

pkfox 21-Jun-17 13:22pm

Good thought i'll give it a go

1 solution

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

RickZeeland · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-21T07:25:00

Solution 1

Open your files in the Notepad++ editor, and look at the menu option "Encoding".
I think your C++ file is in ANSI and your C# file in Unicode which uses up to 2 bytes per char. See: Unicode - Wikipedia[^] and C# in Depth: Unicode and .NET[^]
In C# use Encoding.ASCII to write to a file in ascii format.
You can also convert to ASCII:

C#

Encoding ascii = Encoding.ASCII;
Encoding unicode = Encoding.Unicode;
byte[] asciiBytes = Encoding.Convert(unicode, ascii, unicodeBytes);

Posted 21-Jun-17 7:25am

RickZeeland

Updated 21-Jun-17 7:36am

v4

Comments

pkfox 21-Jun-17 13:40pm

Ok I'll give it a go thanks

RickZeeland 21-Jun-17 13:42pm

Good luck, btw. Notepad++ has a button in the toolbar "show all characters" which can be useful to see non-printing characters like line endings.

[no name] 21-Jun-17 14:09pm

A 5, great link"C# in Depth: Unicode and .NET"

pkfox 22-Jun-17 5:28am

Hi Rick enabling show all characters with both of the files loaded showed me the header record on my file was somehow padded to the width of the rest of the file, the header on the old file is simply MYCOMPANYNAME20170622 but on mine it was written as "MYCOMPANYNAME20170622 128 spaces go here" thanks for your help