How to find out the character set of a text file

Question

Is the a tool (mac or online) that can help me to find out the character set of a text file, and then convert it to utf-8 ?

[This](https://superuser.com/a/762475) is an excellent answer to your question. — Henke, Mar 15 '23 at 13:51

score 11 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 24 '10 at 20:09

11

If you are using Windows try downloading Notepad++. It should recognize the encoding and offers several conversions including UTF-8.

answered Mar 24 '10 at 20:09

Beaner

Nice tool, thank you!! (my score is 11 so I can't boost your). – ragnarius Mar 24 '10 at 20:31
if you need to convert your file: http://www.rishida.net/tools/conversion/ – Adriano Jun 23 '14 at 14:44

SparkAndShine · Answer 2 · 2015-06-04T07:45:06.253

9

For instance,

$ file -i readme.txt 
readme.txt: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

BTW, for converting, use iconv， for instance,

iconv -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8 filename

edited Jun 04 '15 at 07:45

answered Jun 01 '15 at 12:47

SparkAndShine

Thanks, but it does not convert – ragnarius Jun 01 '15 at 21:15
1

In speaking of converting, use the command `iconv`. For instance, `iconv -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8 filename` – SparkAndShine Jun 02 '15 at 07:03
With `file` command, why did both two files encoded with `big5` and `gb2312` present `iso-8859-1`? – niaomingjian Feb 11 '18 at 06:24

2 Answers2