Get encoding of a file in Windows

Question

This isn\'t really a programming question, is there a command line or Windows tool (Windows 7) to get the current encoding of a text file? Sure I can write a little C# app b

Answer 1

Some C code here for reliable ascii, bom's, and utf8 detection: https://unicodebook.readthedocs.io/guess_encoding.html

Only ASCII, UTF-8 and encodings using a BOM (UTF-7 with BOM, UTF-8 with BOM, UTF-16, and UTF-32) have reliable algorithms to get the encoding of a document. For all other encodings, you have to trust heuristics based on statistics.

EDIT:

A powershell version of a C# answer from: Effective way to find any file's Encoding. Only works with signatures (boms).

# get-encoding.ps1
param([Parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$True)] $filename)    
begin {
  # set .net current directoy                                                                                                   
  [Environment]::CurrentDirectory = (pwd).path
}
process {
  $reader = [System.IO.StreamReader]::new($filename, 
    [System.Text.Encoding]::default,$true)
  $peek = $reader.Peek()
  $encoding = $reader.currentencoding
  $reader.close()
  [pscustomobject]@{Name=split-path $filename -leaf
                BodyName=$encoding.BodyName
                EncodingName=$encoding.EncodingName}
}


.\get-encoding chinese8.txt

Name         BodyName EncodingName
----         -------- ------------
chinese8.txt utf-8    Unicode (UTF-8)


get-childitem -file | .\get-encoding