How can I maintain unicode characters reading from file then writing to a variable for email $body...

Question

I'm trying to read from a .txt file containing unicode characters and use that info in a $body variable to be used as part of an email.

The source file has text that looks similar to this...

TrÐn ÐÐc

but it is read then written to the variable as Tr?n ??c

How can I get those unicode characters to display properly when saved in in the variable.

The file is read with $content = Get-Content -path "$source\MyCo-web-application\MyCo-web-application-commits.log"

At this point, the $body variable will contain some data so it is appended with/by...

$body = CopyToBody -content $content -body $body

The CopyToBody function looks like this...

function CopyToBody
{
param ([string[]] $content, [string] $body)

foreach ($line in $content)   
{  
    $body = $body + "`r`n" + $line          
}  

return $body  

}

Is there any way to preserve the unicode characters so the email body looks like the original log file.

Answer 1

Hi @Matt W ,

i created a textfile with this content:

Just a test  
TrÐn ÐÐc  
3rd line  

And I get the correct content using Get-Content this way:

$body = ""  
$content = Get-Content -Path .\sample01.txt -Encoding utf8  
foreach ($line in $content) {  
    $body = $body + "`r`n" + $line          
}  
return $body  

Output looks like this:

----------

(If the reply was helpful please don't forget to upvote and/or accept as answer, thank you)

Regards
Andreas Baumgarten

Answer 2

If your message isn't sent as a MIME-encoded body part the content will be treated as 7-bit ascii. The two Unicode characters that are causing you problems are a codepoint that requires two characters. When the recipient opens the message, and the message isn't constructed correctly, the recipient's mail client treats the additional character as if it was just another ascii character.