From: Jonathan Hudson <jh_ruby-lang@...>
Date: 2011-04-07T04:47:45+09:00
Subject: Re: Windows 2008 Server: Reading Text File with Ruby.

On Thu, 7 Apr 2011 04:35:44 +0900, Angelo NN wrote:

> Jonathan Hudson wrote in post #991289:
> > On Thu, 7 Apr 2011 04:30:13 +0900, Angelo NN wrote:
> >
> >> the output:
> >> Thank you for your help.
> >> 02\x00"
> >> irb(main):004:0>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
> >>
> >>
> >
> > As it starts with a UTF-16 LE Byte order marker, that's a pretty good
> > clue as to the encoding.
> >
> > -jh
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> Can you suggest where I can read/etc. about how to change the encoding 
> for the imported file?

I'm not at all familiar with dealing with encodings on Windows, but
assuming you're using a 1.9x ruby,

 contents = File.open('tmp', 'r:utf-16') { |f| f.read }

or perhaps

 contents = File.open('tmp', 'r:utf-16le') { |f| f.read }

Given the BOM, I'd hope that the former might work.

-jh