Encoding issue when capturing console application output in a test

Question

I'm trying to capture output from a console application by running it in a test using System.Diagnostics.Process. I'm having trouble with character encoding. "£" is showing up as "œ" in the test, but when I run the console application it displays correctly as "£".

If I set Console.Out.Encoding = Encoding.Default, it works in the tests but doesn't display properly when running normally.

What's going on here and how do I fix it?

Answer 1

You need to set the StandardOutputEncoding on your ProcessStartInfo object in your test case:

var process = new Process();
var startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo(@"yourapp.exe");
startInfo.StandardOutputEncoding = Encoding.GetEncoding(850);

You can find what CodePage you are using in your console app by running

Console.WriteLine(Console.Out.Encoding.CodePage); 

which returns 850 (Western European DOS)

You could also use the BodyName property as an arg to GetEncoding that is:

startInfo.StandardOutputEncoding = Encoding.GetEncoding("ibm850");