Can we simplify this string encoding code

Question

Is it possible to simplify this code into a cleaner/faster form?

StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
var encoding = Encoding.GetEncoding(936);

// conv         


        

Answer 1

Does your receipt printer have an API that accepts a byte array rather than a string? If so you may be able to simplify the code to a single conversion, from a Unicode string to a byte array using the encoding used by the receipt printer.

Also, if you want to convert an array of bytes to a string whose character values correspond 1-1 to the values of the bytes, you can use the code page 28591 aka Latin1 aka ISO-8859-1.

I.e., the following

foreach (byte b in converted) 
    builder.Append((char)b); 

string result = builder.ToString(); 

can be replaced by:

// All three of the following are equivalent
// string result = Encoding.GetEncoding(28591).GetString(converted);
// string result = Encoding.GetEncoding("ISO-8859-1").GetString(converted);
string result = Encoding.GetEncoding("Latin1").GetString(converted);

Latin1 is a useful encoding when you want to encode binary data in a string, e.g. to send through a serial port.