.net string type - is it utf16 by default?

Question

I coded up this little test case to try and understand base64 encodings, but I ran into this problem.

see below, why are "stringUtf16" and the "stringDefault" from Encoding.Default not equal? one has a length of 4, the other a length of 3... but display the same on the screen.

Thanks!

    [TestMethod]
    public void EncodingTest()
    {
        var raw = new byte[] { 0x63, 0xE8, 0x3F }; 
        string stringUtf16 = "cè?"; // .Net uses UTF-16 encoding by default
        Console.WriteLine("Utf16: " + stringUtf16);
        string encodedBase64 = "Y+g/";

        stringUtf16.Length.Should().Be(4);

        //------ Verify Encodings
        var stringDefault = Encoding.Default.GetString(raw);
        Console.WriteLine("Default: " + stringDefault);
        stringDefault.Length.Should().Be(3);
        // stringDefault.Should().Be(stringUtf16); // FAILS HERE! 

        var stringUnicode = Encoding.Unicode.GetString(raw);
        Console.WriteLine("Unicode: " + stringUnicode);
        stringUnicode.Should().NotBe(stringUtf16);

        var stringAscii = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(raw);
        Console.WriteLine("Ascii: " + stringAscii);
        stringAscii.Should().NotBe(stringUtf16);

        var stringUtf8 = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(raw);
        Console.WriteLine("UTF8: " + stringUtf8);
        stringUtf8.Should().NotBe(stringUtf16);

        string stringBase64 = Convert.ToBase64String(raw);
        Console.WriteLine("Base64: " + stringBase64);
        stringBase64.Should().NotBe(stringUtf16);
        stringBase64.Should().Be(encodedBase64);


        //------ Verify Decodings
        byte[] decodedBytes = Convert.FromBase64String(encodedBase64);
        decodedBytes.Length.Should().Be(3);

        string decodedText = Encoding.Default.GetString(decodedBytes);
        Console.WriteLine(decodedText);
        decodedText.Length.Should().Be(3);
        decodedText.Should().Be(stringDefault);
    }

Answer 1

Yes. Have a look at the documentation: ref.

Each code point is encoded by using UTF-16 encoding...