VB strings, MSXML, Latin 9, and the Euro

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From: Rod Good (start_monday_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 06/16/04 

Date: 15 Jun 2004 17:33:51 -0700

Hi,

I have an Excel application which is receiving XML via MSXML4, encoded
with charset=ISO-8859-15. The XML text may contain the Euro symbol. I
want to place the text into a VB string, and sometime later, a cell.

If I decode the XML text into a byte array, I can see that the Euro
has been correctly decoded using the Windows charset CP1252 to the
value 128 (0x80).

However if I create an empty string and append the VB Euro symbol -

Dim str as String
Dim b() as Byte

str = Chr(128)
b = str

msgbox "high byte=" & b(0) & ", low byte=" & b(1)

I find that the Euro should be encoded with high and low values of 177
& 32. So when I create a VB string from the XML text, the Euro
character is completely wrong.

I'd really appreciate any insight into what's happening here, and how
to correctly specify the charset when I create the VB string, or
alternatively, the correct character set to use on the XML encoding
side.

Many thanks,

Rod

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