title: How to GET data from an URL and save it into a file in binary in C#.NET without the encoding mess?
body: <p>In C#.NET, I want to fetch data from an URL and save it to a file in binary.</p>
  
  <p>Using HttpWebRequest/Streamreader to read into a string and saving using StreamWriter works fine with ASCII, but non-ASCII characters get mangled because the Systems thinks it has to worry about Encodings, encode to Unicode or from or whatever. </p>
  
  <p>What is the easiest way to GET data from an URL and saving it to a file, binary, as-is?</p>
  
  <pre><code>// This code works, but for ASCII only
  String url = "url...";
  HttpWebRequest  request  = (HttpWebRequest)
  WebRequest.Create(url);
  
  // execute the request
  HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)
  request.GetResponse();
  
  // we will read data via the response stream
  Stream ReceiveStream = response.GetResponseStream();
  StreamReader readStream = new StreamReader( ReceiveStream );
  string contents = readStream.ReadToEnd();
  
  string filename = @"...";
  
  // create a writer and open the file
  TextWriter tw = new StreamWriter(filename);
  tw.Write(contents.Substring(5));
  tw.Close();
  </code></pre>