Since all strings in .NET are Unicode strings (see String, Char and Byte, you need to use the right encoding when reading and writing (disk, network, database).

For the Encodings please see the classes that inherit from the System.Text.Encoding class:

• System.Text.ASCIIEncoding: 7 bit ASCII
• System.Text.UnicodeEncoding: UTF-16 Unicode
• System.Text.UTF32Encoding: UTF-32 Unicode
• System.Text.UTF7Encoding: UTF-7 Unicode
• System.Text.UTF8Encoding: UTF-8 Unicode

The Encoding class has a few very interesting static methods (please see MSDN for further details):

• Convert converts a byte array from one encoding to another
• GetBytes converts a character array or a string to a byte array
• GetChars converts a byte array to a char array
• GetString converts a byte array to a string

It may sound difficult, but it is neccessary to understand the encodings when you deal with different systems (disk, database, network). Otherwise you will corrupt your data.