Converting UTF-8 to windows-1255 encoding in VB.NET - vb.net

Question

I am trying to convert a string encoded in UTF-8 to windows-1255 in VB.NET with no luck. Admittedly, I don't know VB but have tried using an example at MSDN and modifying it to my needs:
Public Function Utf82Hebrew(ByVal Str As String) As String
Dim ascii As Encoding = Encoding.GetEncoding("windows-1255")
Dim unicode As Encoding = Encoding.Unicode
' Convert the string into a byte array.
Dim unicodeBytes As Byte() = unicode.GetBytes(Str)
' Perform the conversion from one encoding to the other.
Dim asciiBytes As Byte() = Encoding.Convert(unicode, ascii, unicodeBytes)
' Convert the new byte array into a char array and then into a string.
Dim asciiChars(ascii.GetCharCount(asciiBytes, 0, asciiBytes.Length)-1) As Char
ascii.GetChars(asciiBytes, 0, asciiBytes.Length, asciiChars, 0)
Dim asciiString As New String(asciiChars)
Utf82Hebrew = asciiString
End Function
This function doesn't actually do anything—the string remains in UTF-8. However, if I change this line:
Dim ascii As Encoding = Encoding.GetEncoding("windows-1255")
To this:
Dim ascii As Encoding = Encoding.ASCII
Then the function returns question marks in the place of the string.
Does anyone know how to properly convert a UTF-8 string to a specific encoding (in this case, windows-1255), and/or what I'm doing wrong in the above code?
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I modified your code.
It is very straightforward to convert text from one encoding into another.
This is how you should do it in VB.Net.
Microsof Windows file encoding is 1252, not 1255.
Public Function Utf82Hebrew(ByVal Str As String) As String
Dim ascii As System.Text.Encoding = System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding("1252")
Dim unicode As System.Text.Encoding = System.Text.Encoding.Unicode
' Convert the string into a byte array.
Dim unicodeBytes As Byte() = unicode.GetBytes(Str)
' Perform the conversion from one encoding to the other.
Dim asciiBytes As Byte() = System.Text.Encoding.Convert(unicode, ascii, unicodeBytes)
' Convert the new byte array into a char array and then into a string.
Dim asciiString As String = ascii.GetString(asciiBytes)
Utf82Hebrew = asciiString
End Function