detect the locale of a text file?

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Hi all,

Is there a way to detect a .txt file's locale? My application needs read a text file from local user. Do I need know the file from greek or french? Or I just read that file in. I am using visual studio 2008. my original thought is to read file in and convert each string to neutral string. Sorry for the stupid question. I cannot find much information online. Thanks a lot.

Posted 20-Dec-11 8:54am

Member 8256632

Updated 20-Dec-11 11:04am

Wonde Tadesse

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Wendelius · Answer 1 · 2011-12-20T09:03:00

Solution 1

Text files don't have locale information. What may differ between files is the encoding of the data. For example a simple text file can be saved using ANSI or Unicode etc.

Posted 20-Dec-11 9:03am

Wendelius

Comments

Member 8256632 20-Dec-11 15:09pm

Thank you very much. That's why I cannot find useful information. Thank you for your direction.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 20-Dec-11 19:15pm

Correct, but this also needs information on use of Unicode BOM -- very important.
Please see my answer.
--SA

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov · Answer 2 · 2011-12-20T13:14:00

Solution 3

The whole idea of locale is obsolete. A notion of locale is still used in different version of Windows, mostly in the form of rudiment. These days, Unicode is used.

Now, the text files can have a UTF Byte-Order Marker (BOM) used to inform a text editor on what UTF is used. As to .NET API, text stream and reader classes have options to auto-recognize Unicode UTFs by the BOM. Unicode-enabled text editors have the "Save as" option which allows to select the UTF or none, which means all good ANSI.

For further detail, see:
http://unicode.org/[^],
http://unicode.org/faq/utf_bom.html[^].

—SA

Posted 20-Dec-11 13:14pm

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov

Comments

Wendelius 21-Dec-11 0:29am

Good clarification, 5

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 21-Dec-11 1:05am

Overall, these things are poorly understood by many, as well as Unicode in general. So many people thing this is a 16-bit code, which is not even close to the truth...
--SA

Member 8256632 21-Dec-11 9:47am

Thank you SA. but in my text file, there are just numbers. in canada, we use 1,000.00, but in german, they use 1.000,00. totally different. Now I use System.IO.StreamReader oStream = new System.IO.StreamReader(this.m_sFileName);
to read that file, but I cannot even read the numbers in. How can I read that file? I mean for now, we put the encoding aside.

Member 8256632 · Answer 3 · 2011-12-20T09:20:00

Solution 2

Now my text file from greek, when I read this file in, it has problem said "has invalid formatting and can not be read". How can I read this file in at least, then I can do
value.ToString(CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("en-GB")));
to convert it.

Posted 20-Dec-11 9:20am

Member 8256632

Amir Mahfoozi · Answer 4 · 2011-12-20T18:07:00

Did you see this page :
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1192768/return-the-language-of-a-given-string/1192802#1192802[^]

If you don't want to use google API then you should check the range of the character codes :
http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fontsbyrange.html[^]

http://jrgraphix.net/research/unicode_blocks.php[^]

A sample of this method :
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1288009/detecting-locale-from-unicode-string-in-c[^]

Hope it helps.