UTF-8 output from PowerShell

Question

I m trying to use Process Start with redirected I O to call PowerShell exe with a string  and to get the output back  all in UTF-8  But I don t seem to be able to make this work   What I ve tried    Passing the command to run via the -Command parameter Writing the PowerShell script as a file to disk with UTF-8 encoding Writing the PowerShell script as a file to disk with UTF-8 with BOM encoding Writing the PowerShell script as a file to disk with UTF-16 Setting Console OutputEncoding in both my console application and in the PowerShell script Setting  OutputEncoding in PowerShell Setting Process StartInfo StandardOutputEncoding Doing it all with Encoding Unicode instead of Encoding UTF8   In every case  when I inspect the bytes I m given  I get different values to my original string  I d really love an explanation as to why this doesn t work   Here is my code   static void Main string   args        DumpBytes  H  llo         ExecuteCommand  PowerShell exe    -Command    OutputEncoding    System Text Encoding   UTF8   Write-Output  H  llo               Environment CurrentDirectory  DumpBytes  DumpBytes        Console ReadLine       static void DumpBytes string text        Console Write text         string Join      Encoding UTF8 GetBytes text  Select b   gt  b ToString  X           Console WriteLine       static int ExecuteCommand string executable  string arguments  string workingDirectory  Action lt string gt  output  Action lt string gt  error        try               using  var process   new Process                          process StartInfo FileName   executable              process StartInfo Arguments   arguments              process StartInfo WorkingDirectory   workingDirectory              process StartInfo UseShellExecute   false              process StartInfo CreateNoWindow   true              process StartInfo RedirectStandardOutput   true              process StartInfo RedirectStandardError   true              process StartInfo StandardOutputEncoding   Encoding UTF8              process StartInfo StandardErrorEncoding   Encoding UTF8               using  var outputWaitHandle   new AutoResetEvent false               using  var errorWaitHandle   new AutoResetEvent false                                 process OutputDataReceived     sender  e    gt                                        if  e Data    null                                                outputWaitHandle Set                                              else                                               output e Data                                                             process ErrorDataReceived     sender  e    gt                                        if  e Data    null                                                errorWaitHandle Set                                              else                                               error e Data                                                             process Start                     process BeginOutputReadLine                    process BeginErrorReadLine                     process WaitForExit                    outputWaitHandle WaitOne                    errorWaitHandle WaitOne                     return process ExitCode                                    catch  Exception ex                throw new Exception string Format  Error when attempting to execute  0    1    executable  ex Message               ex             Update 1  I found that if I make this script    Console   OutputEncoding    System Text Encoding   UTF8 Write-Host  H  llo    Console   WriteLine  H  llo     Then invoke it via   ExecuteCommand  PowerShell exe    -File C   Users  Paul  Desktop  Foo ps1     Environment CurrentDirectory  DumpBytes  DumpBytes     The first line is corrupted  but the second isn t   H llo  48 EF BF BD 6C 6C 6F 21 H  llo 48 C3 A9 6C 6C 6F   This suggests to me that my redirection code is all working fine  when I use Console WriteLine in PowerShell I get UTF-8 as I expect   This means that PowerShell s Write-Output and Write-Host commands must be doing something different with the output  and not simply calling Console WriteLine   Update 2  I ve even tried the following to force the PowerShell console code page to UTF-8  but Write-Host and Write-Output continue to produce broken results while  Console   WriteLine works    sig       DllImport  kernel32 dll    public static extern bool SetConsoleCP uint wCodePageID     DllImport  kernel32 dll    public static extern bool SetConsoleOutputCP uint wCodePageID        type   Add-Type -MemberDefinition  sig -Name Win32Utils -Namespace Foo -PassThru   type  SetConsoleCP 65001   type  SetConsoleOutputCP 65001   Write-Host  H  llo     amp  chcp      Tells us 65001  UTF-8  is being used

User · Answer

Set the  Console   OuputEncoding as encoding whatever you want  and print out with  Console   WriteLine    If powershell ouput method has a problem  then don t use it  It feels bit bad  but works like a charm

User · Answer

This is a bug in  NET  When PowerShell launches  it caches the output handle  Console Out   The Encoding property of that text writer does not pick up the value StandardOutputEncoding property   When you change it from within PowerShell  the Encoding property of the cached output writer returns the cached value  so the output is still encoded with the default encoding   As a workaround  I would suggest not changing the encoding  It will be returned to you as a Unicode string  at which point you can manage the encoding yourself   Caching example   102  C  Users leeholm   gt  gt   r1    Console   Out  103  C  Users leeholm   gt  gt   r1  Encoding                                          FormatProvider --------                                          -------------- System Text SBCSCodePageEncoding                  en-US    104  C  Users leeholm   gt  gt   Console   OutputEncoding    System Text Encoding   UTF8  105  C  Users leeholm   gt  gt   r1  Encoding                                          FormatProvider --------                                          -------------- System Text SBCSCodePageEncoding                  en-US

User · Answer

Spent some time working on a solution to my issue and thought it may be of interest  I ran into a problem trying to automate code generation using PowerShell 3 0 on Windows 8  The target IDE was the Keil compiler using MDK-ARM Essential Toolchain 5 24 1  A bit different from OP  as I am using PowerShell natively during the pre-build step  When I tried to  include the generated file  I received the error      fatal error  UTF-16  LE  byte order mark detected     GITVersion h    but encoding is not supported   I solved the problem by changing the line that generated the output file from   out-file -FilePath GITVersion h -InputObject  result   to   out-file -FilePath GITVersion h -Encoding ascii -InputObject  result

User · Answer

Not an expert on encoding  but after reading these      http   blogs msdn com b powershell archive 2006 12 11 outputencoding-to-the-rescue aspx http   technet microsoft com en-us library hh847796 aspx http   www johndcook com blog 2008 08 25 powershell-output-redirection-unicode-or-ascii        it seems fairly clear that the  OutputEncoding variable only affects data piped to native applications    If sending to a file from withing PowerShell  the encoding can be controlled by the -encoding parameter on the out-file cmdlet e g    write-output  hello    out-file  enctest txt  -encoding utf8   Nothing else you can do on the PowerShell front then  but the following post may well help you     http   blogs msdn com b ddietric archive 2010 11 08 decoding-standard-output-and-standard-error-when-redirecting-to-a-gui-application aspx

[powershell] UTF-8 output from PowerShell

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