How Can I Correctly Convert UTF-8 to ISO-8859-1 Encoding Without Data Loss?

Solving the UTF-8 to ISO-8859-1 Encoding Conversion Challenge

Converting character strings between different encodings, particularly when non-ASCII characters are involved, often presents difficulties. A frequent problem is converting from UTF-8 to ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1). Incorrect conversions might transform "ÄäÖöÕõÜü" into something like "Ã?äÃ?öÃ?õÃ?ü".

This happens because UTF-8 uses variable-length encoding, while ISO-8859-1 is a fixed-single-byte encoding. Direct conversion using methods like GetString() can corrupt non-ASCII characters.

The solution lies in using the Encoding.Convert method. This correctly handles the conversion process: it takes the UTF-8 byte array, transforms it into an ISO-8859-1 byte array, and then decodes this array using the target encoding.

Here's the corrected code snippet:

Encoding iso = Encoding.GetEncoding("ISO-8859-1");
Encoding utf8 = Encoding.UTF8;
byte[] utfBytes = utf8.GetBytes(Message);
byte[] isoBytes = Encoding.Convert(utf8, iso, utfBytes);
string msg = iso.GetString(isoBytes);

This approach ensures accurate conversion of non-ASCII characters, yielding the expected "ÄäÖöÕõÜü" output from the example input. The key is the intermediate byte array manipulation provided by Encoding.Convert before final decoding.

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