StreamReader.CurrentEncoding Property gets character encoding
Imports System Imports System.IO Imports System.Text Public Class Test Public Shared Sub Main() Dim path As String = "c:\temp\MyTest.txt" Try Dim sw As StreamWriter = New StreamWriter(path, False, New UnicodeEncoding()) sw.WriteLine("This") sw.WriteLine("is ") sw.WriteLine("a") sw.WriteLine("test") sw.Close() Dim sr As StreamReader = New StreamReader(path, True) Do While sr.Peek() >= 0 Console.Write(Convert.ToChar(sr.Read())) Loop Console.WriteLine("The encoding used was {0}.", sr.CurrentEncoding) sr.Close() Catch e As Exception Console.WriteLine("The process failed: {0}", e.ToString()) End Try End Sub End Class