Import txt file with empty line at the end and special characters

Question

I want to import txt file with empty line at the end and special characters. I tried many options from the documentation. "String" option detects the empty line but it does not recognise special characters.

file = ParentDirectory@$UserDocumentsDirectory<>"\\Downloads\\nekineki.txt";

Export[file,"123 abc 🐶🐱\n"];
SystemOpen@file;

Import@file
Import[file,"String"] 

Out:

What is the right way to import this?

I'm using Mathematica 13.1 and Windows 11.

Answer 1

It seems that the trailing "\n" is being dropped. I have a verbose workaround.

expStr = ExportString["123 abc 🐶🐱\n", "Text"];

Then

StringJoin[
 StringRiffle[
  ImportString[#, "Text"] & /@
   StringSplit[
    ImportString[expStr, "String"]
    , "\n", All]
  , "\n"
  ]
 ]

"123 abc 🐶🐱
"

As I said it is verbose; room for improvement.

Answer 2

On macOS it works via ReadByteArray and ByteArrayToString:

file = "\\tmp\\nekineki.txt";

Export[file, "123 abc 🐶🐱\n"];

ByteArrayToString[ReadByteArray[file]]
(*    "123 abc 🐶🐱\n"    *)

We can define a reader function:

myread = ByteArrayToString@*ReadByteArray;

myread[file]
(*    "123 abc 🐶🐱\n"    *)

Or, following @GalZoidberg's advice, for Windows we can do

myread = StringDelete["\r"]@*ByteArrayToString@*ReadByteArray;

to make sure we don't end up with lingering \r\n patterns.