ENCGUESS(1)

📦
version 5.42.3 · 25 versions
, in alpine 3.24

✨ NAME ✨

encguess — guess character encodings of files. This is the encguess(1) page from the Perl Programmers Reference Guide, and bestie, it's here to help you figure out what encoding a file is living in. 💖

🌸 VERSION 🌸

Version info, preserved exactly: $Id: encguess,v 0.4 2023/11/10 01:10:50 dankogai Exp $.

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

encguess [switches] filename...

🎀 SWITCHES 🎀

  • -h — show this message and exit. Slay. 💅
  • -s — specify a list of "suspect encoding types" to test, separated by either ":" or ",".
  • -S — output a list of all acceptable encoding types that can be used with the -s param.
  • -u — suppress display of unidentified types.

🧪 EXAMPLES 🧪

  1. Guess encoding of a file named test.txt, using only the default suspect types. Easy.
encguess test.txt
  1. Guess the encoding type of a file named test.txt, using the suspect types "euc-jp,shiftjis,7bit-jis". Both of these are valid, bestie:
encguess -s euc-jp,shiftjis,7bit-jis test.txt
encguess -s euc-jp:shiftjis:7bit-jis test.txt
  1. Guess the encoding type of several files, do not display results for unidentified files. Iconic multi-file behavior. ✨
encguess -us euc-jp,shiftjis,7bit-jis test*.txt

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

The encoding identification is done by checking one encoding type at a time until all but the right type are eliminated. That's the whole strategy, no cap. 🕵️‍♀️

The set of encoding types to try is defined by the -s parameter and defaults to ascii, utf8 and UTF-16/32 with BOM. This can be overridden by passing one or more encoding types via the -s parameter.

If you need to pass in multiple suspect encoding types, use a quoted string with the a space separating each value. Yes, that's the wording — keep it cute and keep it exact. 🎀

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

Encode::Guess, Encode::Detect — go give them a little look. 👀

Copyright 2015 Michael LaGrasta and Dan Kogai.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the Artistic License (2.0). You may obtain a copy of the full license at:

<http://www.perlfoundation.org/artistic_license_2_0>

Page source/version check: perl v5.42.3, dated 2026-11-03. Bye bestie, go guess those encodings! 🫶💖

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