Weird Characters when reading Blob from Container - azure-powershell

Question

I have some text files that contain either OK or FAIL written to a storage account. If I download the files to disk, the contents display as expected in notepad,
However, if I get the file contents to a variable and Write-Host that, I get �O K
I am doing this:
$storageContext = New-AzureStorageContext $storageAccountName $storageAccountKey
$storageContainer = "monitor"
$storageBlobs = Get-AzureStorageBlob -Container $storageContainer -Context $storageContext
foreach($storageBlob in $storageBlobs) {
$blobContents = $storageBlob.ICloudBlob.DownloadText()
$blobName = $storageBlob.Name
Write-Host $blobName
Write-Host $blobContents
Write-Host
}
I thought that maybe I could tell it to use UTF8 like this:
$encoding = [System.text.Encoding]::UTF8
foreach($storageBlob in $storageBlobs) {
$blobContents = $storageBlob.ICloudBlob.DownloadText($encoding)
$blobName = $storageBlob.Name
Write-Host $blobName
Write-Host $blobContents
Write-Host
}
However, that doesn't work.
I'm now trying getting it as a ByteArray with .DownloadToByteArray but my first attempt is throwing errors.
Why are there extra characters and spaces when retrieved via Powershell but not when viewed in notepad. Am I correct in thinking this is a simple encoding issue?

Answer 1

Yes, it is an encoding issue. If the file is encoding with UTF8, you should use UTF8 to decode it. If it's encoding with unicode, you should use unicode to decode it.
Then in your case, I think it's using unicode. You should use Unicode to decode it, like $encoding = [System.text.Encoding]::Unicode.
I can reproduce your issue, and test it with encoding UTF8(not work), but works with Unicode.
UTF8:
Unicode: