Problems with file encoding

[Fritz Fischer]

Hello!

I am using Octave for Windows (octave-forge)

I was trying to import a text file that was spit out by our CAD software into a nice octave matrix.

But this was not successful due to a problem with the encoding. I can not completly figure out
why this happens and hope that you can help me.

My text editor tells me that file from the CAD software is encoded in "UCS-2 Little Endian".
Just trying to read this file unmodified results in a row of strange characters in the output file
that I am trying to export.

The input file looks like this:

---
0.000    28.500
607.143    25.357
1214.286    22.903
1821.429    20.976
2428.571    19.448
---

Some code I am using:

---
fin = fopen(filename_input, 'rt');
...
s_old = fgetl(fin);
...
---

It seems that only the first line is read wrong, because if I display
all the lines read into the variable s_old it shows that typical ascii-rectangle followed by the
numbers it should show:

s_old =  ■0 , 0 0 0      2 8 , 5 0 0

All other rows look fine.

If I convert the input-file into ANSI or UTF8 before by using the text editor everything works fine.

Since this calculation has to be done to a lot of text files manually converting them to
a different encoding is not a solution.

Can I somehow change the input format that Octave accepts? Or can someone tell me
another solution to this? 

Kind regards,
Walter