How do I handle special characters in strings in a web service?

To show this fundamental problem in .NET and the reason behind this question, I wrote a simple test web service in one way (EditString) and with a console application that calls it.

They are standard webservices / consoles applications created with File / New Project etc., so I won't list all the code - just these methods:

Web Method:

[WebMethod]
public string EditString(string s, bool useSpecial)
{
    return s + (useSpecial ? ((char)19).ToString() : "");
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

[You can see that it just returns the string s if useSpecial is false. If useSpecial is true, it returns s + char 19.]

Console application:

TestService.Service1 service = new SCTestConsumer.TestService.Service1();

string response1 = service.EditString("hello", false);
Console.WriteLine(response1);

string response2 = service.EditString("hello", true); // fails!
Console.WriteLine(response2);

      

        
        
        
      

    

[The second answer fails because the method returns hello + special character (ascii code 19 for argument sake).]

Error:

• There is an error in the XML document (1, 287)

• Inner exception: "'', hex 0x13, is an invalid character. Line 1, position 287 ..

A few notes:

• The WORKS FINE web method itself looks directly at the ASMX file (for example http://localhost:2065/service1.asmx
  
  ) and runs that method through this (with the same parameters as in the console application) - i.e. displays XML with the string hello + char 19.

• Checking the serialized XML in other ways shows that the special character is being encoded properly (it seems that SERVER SIDE is OK, which is GOOD)

• So it seems that the CLIENT SIDE issue has a problem - that is, the .NET proxy class code does not handle special characters

• This is part of a larger project in which objects are passed inside and outside of web methods that contain string attributes - that's what it takes to work properly. that is, we are de-serializing the classes.

Any suggestions for a workaround and how to implement it?

Or am I completely missing something really obvious !!?

PS. I was not very lucky to have it using CDATA tags (does .NET support them out of the box?).