Effective way to find any file's Encoding

Yes is a most frequent question, and this matter is vague for me and since I don't know much about it.

But i would like a very precise way to find a files Encoding. So precise as Notepad++ is.

The StreamReader.CurrentEncoding property rarely returns the correct text file encoding for me. I've had greater success determining a file's endianness, by analyzing its byte order mark (BOM). If the file does not have a BOM, this cannot determine the file's encoding.

*UPDATED 4/08/2020 to include UTF-32LE detection and return correct encoding for UTF-32BE

/// <summary>
/// Determines a text file's encoding by analyzing its byte order mark (BOM).
/// Defaults to ASCII when detection of the text file's endianness fails.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="filename">The text file to analyze.</param>
/// <returns>The detected encoding.</returns>
public static Encoding GetEncoding(string filename)
{
    // Read the BOM
    var bom = new byte[4];
    using (var file = new FileStream(filename, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
    {
        file.Read(bom, 0, 4);
    }

    // Analyze the BOM
    if (bom[0] == 0x2b && bom[1] == 0x2f && bom[2] == 0x76) return Encoding.UTF7;
    if (bom[0] == 0xef && bom[1] == 0xbb && bom[2] == 0xbf) return Encoding.UTF8;
    if (bom[0] == 0xff && bom[1] == 0xfe && bom[2] == 0 && bom[3] == 0) return Encoding.UTF32; //UTF-32LE
    if (bom[0] == 0xff && bom[1] == 0xfe) return Encoding.Unicode; //UTF-16LE
    if (bom[0] == 0xfe && bom[1] == 0xff) return Encoding.BigEndianUnicode; //UTF-16BE
    if (bom[0] == 0 && bom[1] == 0 && bom[2] == 0xfe && bom[3] == 0xff) return new UTF32Encoding(true, true);  //UTF-32BE

    // We actually have no idea what the encoding is if we reach this point, so
    // you may wish to return null instead of defaulting to ASCII
    return Encoding.ASCII;
}

The following code works fine for me, using the StreamReader class:

  using (var reader = new StreamReader(fileName, defaultEncodingIfNoBom, true))
  {
      reader.Peek(); // you need this!
      var encoding = reader.CurrentEncoding;
  }

The trick is to use the Peek call, otherwise, .NET has not done anything (and it hasn't read the preamble, the BOM). Of course, if you use any other ReadXXX call before checking the encoding, it works too.

If the file has no BOM, then the defaultEncodingIfNoBom encoding will be used. There is also a StreamReader constructor overload without this argument (in this case, the encoding will by default be set to UTF8 before any read), but I recommend to define what you consider the default encoding in your context.

I have tested this successfully with files with BOM for UTF8, UTF16/Unicode (LE & BE) and UTF32 (LE & BE). It does not work for UTF7.

Providing the implementation details for the steps proposed by @CodesInChaos:

1. Check if there is a Byte Order Mark

2. Check if the file is valid UTF8

3. Use the local "ANSI" codepage (ANSI as Microsoft defines it)

Step 2 works because most non ASCII sequences in codepages other that UTF8 are not valid UTF8. https://stackoverflow.com/a/4522251/867248 explains the tactic in more details.

using System; using System.IO; using System.Text;

// Using encoding from BOM or UTF8 if no BOM found,
// check if the file is valid, by reading all lines
// If decoding fails, use the local "ANSI" codepage

public string DetectFileEncoding(Stream fileStream)
{
    var Utf8EncodingVerifier = Encoding.GetEncoding("utf-8", new EncoderExceptionFallback(), new DecoderExceptionFallback());
    using (var reader = new StreamReader(fileStream, Utf8EncodingVerifier,
           detectEncodingFromByteOrderMarks: true, leaveOpen: true, bufferSize: 1024))
    {
        string detectedEncoding;
        try
        {
            while (!reader.EndOfStream)
            {
                var line = reader.ReadLine();
            }
            detectedEncoding = reader.CurrentEncoding.BodyName;
        }
        catch (Exception e)
        {
            // Failed to decode the file using the BOM/UT8. 
            // Assume it's local ANSI
            detectedEncoding = "ISO-8859-1";
        }
        // Rewind the stream
        fileStream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
        return detectedEncoding;
   }
}


[Test]
public void Test1()
{
    Stream fs = File.OpenRead(@".\TestData\TextFile_ansi.csv");
    var detectedEncoding = DetectFileEncoding(fs);

    using (var reader = new StreamReader(fs, Encoding.GetEncoding(detectedEncoding)))
    {
       // Consume your file
        var line = reader.ReadLine();
        ...

Check this.

UDE

This is a port of Mozilla Universal Charset Detector and you can use it like this...

public static void Main(String[] args)
{
    string filename = args[0];
    using (FileStream fs = File.OpenRead(filename)) {
        Ude.CharsetDetector cdet = new Ude.CharsetDetector();
        cdet.Feed(fs);
        cdet.DataEnd();
        if (cdet.Charset != null) {
            Console.WriteLine("Charset: {0}, confidence: {1}", 
                 cdet.Charset, cdet.Confidence);
        } else {
            Console.WriteLine("Detection failed.");
        }
    }
}

I'd try the following steps:

1. Check if there is a Byte Order Mark

2. Check if the file is valid UTF8

3. Use the local "ANSI" codepage (ANSI as Microsoft defines it)

Step 2 works because most non ASCII sequences in codepages other that UTF8 are not valid UTF8.

.NET is not very helpful, but you can try the following algorithm:

1. try to find the encoding by BOM(byte order mark) ... very likely not to be found
2. try parsing into different encodings

Here is the call:

var encoding = FileHelper.GetEncoding(filePath);
if (encoding == null)
    throw new Exception("The file encoding is not supported. Please choose one of the following encodings: UTF8/UTF7/iso-8859-1");

Here is the code:

public class FileHelper
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Determines a text file's encoding by analyzing its byte order mark (BOM) and if not found try parsing into diferent encodings       
    /// Defaults to UTF8 when detection of the text file's endianness fails.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="filename">The text file to analyze.</param>
    /// <returns>The detected encoding or null.</returns>
    public static Encoding GetEncoding(string filename)
    {
        var encodingByBOM = GetEncodingByBOM(filename);
        if (encodingByBOM != null)
            return encodingByBOM;

        // BOM not found :(, so try to parse characters into several encodings
        var encodingByParsingUTF8 = GetEncodingByParsing(filename, Encoding.UTF8);
        if (encodingByParsingUTF8 != null)
            return encodingByParsingUTF8;

        var encodingByParsingLatin1 = GetEncodingByParsing(filename, Encoding.GetEncoding("iso-8859-1"));
        if (encodingByParsingLatin1 != null)
            return encodingByParsingLatin1;

        var encodingByParsingUTF7 = GetEncodingByParsing(filename, Encoding.UTF7);
        if (encodingByParsingUTF7 != null)
            return encodingByParsingUTF7;

        return null;   // no encoding found
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Determines a text file's encoding by analyzing its byte order mark (BOM)  
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="filename">The text file to analyze.</param>
    /// <returns>The detected encoding.</returns>
    private static Encoding GetEncodingByBOM(string filename)
    {
        // Read the BOM
        var byteOrderMark = new byte[4];
        using (var file = new FileStream(filename, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
        {
            file.Read(byteOrderMark, 0, 4);
        }

        // Analyze the BOM
        if (byteOrderMark[0] == 0x2b && byteOrderMark[1] == 0x2f && byteOrderMark[2] == 0x76) return Encoding.UTF7;
        if (byteOrderMark[0] == 0xef && byteOrderMark[1] == 0xbb && byteOrderMark[2] == 0xbf) return Encoding.UTF8;
        if (byteOrderMark[0] == 0xff && byteOrderMark[1] == 0xfe) return Encoding.Unicode; //UTF-16LE
        if (byteOrderMark[0] == 0xfe && byteOrderMark[1] == 0xff) return Encoding.BigEndianUnicode; //UTF-16BE
        if (byteOrderMark[0] == 0 && byteOrderMark[1] == 0 && byteOrderMark[2] == 0xfe && byteOrderMark[3] == 0xff) return Encoding.UTF32;

        return null;    // no BOM found
    }

    private static Encoding GetEncodingByParsing(string filename, Encoding encoding)
    {            
        var encodingVerifier = Encoding.GetEncoding(encoding.BodyName, new EncoderExceptionFallback(), new DecoderExceptionFallback());

        try
        {
            using (var textReader = new StreamReader(filename, encodingVerifier, detectEncodingFromByteOrderMarks: true))
            {
                while (!textReader.EndOfStream)
                {                        
                    textReader.ReadLine();   // in order to increment the stream position
                }

                // all text parsed ok
                return textReader.CurrentEncoding;
            }
        }
        catch (Exception ex) { }

        return null;    // 
    }
}

Look here for c#

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.streamreader.currentencoding%28v=vs.110%29.aspx

string path = @"path\to\your\file.ext";

using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(path, true))
{
    while (sr.Peek() >= 0)
    {
        Console.Write((char)sr.Read());
    }

    //Test for the encoding after reading, or at least
    //after the first read.
    Console.WriteLine("The encoding used was {0}.", sr.CurrentEncoding);
    Console.ReadLine();
    Console.WriteLine();
}

The following codes are my Powershell codes to determinate if some cpp or h or ml files are encodeding with ISO-8859-1(Latin-1) or UTF-8 without BOM, if neither then suppose it to be GB18030. I am a Chinese working in France and MSVC saves as Latin-1 on french computer and saves as GB on Chinese computer so this helps me avoid encoding problem when do source file exchanges between my system and my colleagues.

The way is simple, if all characters are between x00-x7E, ASCII, UTF-8 and Latin-1 are all the same, but if I read a non ASCII file by UTF-8, we will find the special character � show up, so try to read with Latin-1. In Latin-1, between \x7F and \xAF is empty, while GB uses full between x00-xFF so if I got any between the two, it's not Latin-1

The code is written in PowerShell, but uses .net so it's easy to be translated into C# or F#

$Utf8NoBomEncoding = New-Object System.Text.UTF8Encoding($False)
foreach($i in Get-ChildItem .\ -Recurse -include *.cpp,*.h, *.ml) {
    $openUTF = New-Object System.IO.StreamReader -ArgumentList ($i, [Text.Encoding]::UTF8)
    $contentUTF = $openUTF.ReadToEnd()
    [regex]$regex = '�'
	$c=$regex.Matches($contentUTF).count
    $openUTF.Close()
    if ($c -ne 0) {
        $openLatin1 = New-Object System.IO.StreamReader -ArgumentList ($i, [Text.Encoding]::GetEncoding('ISO-8859-1'))
        $contentLatin1 = $openLatin1.ReadToEnd()
        $openLatin1.Close()
        [regex]$regex = '[\x7F-\xAF]'
	    $c=$regex.Matches($contentLatin1).count
	    if ($c -eq 0) {
            [System.IO.File]::WriteAllLines($i, $contentLatin1, $Utf8NoBomEncoding)
            $i.FullName
        } 
        else {
            $openGB = New-Object System.IO.StreamReader -ArgumentList ($i, [Text.Encoding]::GetEncoding('GB18030'))
            $contentGB = $openGB.ReadToEnd()
            $openGB.Close()
            [System.IO.File]::WriteAllLines($i, $contentGB, $Utf8NoBomEncoding)
            $i.FullName
        }
    }
}
Write-Host -NoNewLine 'Press any key to continue...';
$null = $Host.UI.RawUI.ReadKey('NoEcho,IncludeKeyDown');

This seems to work well.

First create a helper method:

  private static Encoding TestCodePage(Encoding testCode, byte[] byteArray)
    {
      try
      {
        var encoding = Encoding.GetEncoding(testCode.CodePage, EncoderFallback.ExceptionFallback, DecoderFallback.ExceptionFallback);
        var a = encoding.GetCharCount(byteArray);
        return testCode;
      }
      catch (Exception e)
      {
        return null;
      }
    }

Then create code to test the source. In this case, I've got a byte array I need to get the encoding of:

 public static Encoding DetectCodePage(byte[] contents)
    {
      if (contents == null || contents.Length == 0)
      {
        return Encoding.Default;
      }

      return TestCodePage(Encoding.UTF8, contents)
             ?? TestCodePage(Encoding.Unicode, contents)
             ?? TestCodePage(Encoding.BigEndianUnicode, contents)
             ?? TestCodePage(Encoding.GetEncoding(1252), contents) // Western European
             ?? TestCodePage(Encoding.GetEncoding(28591), contents) // ISO Western European
             ?? TestCodePage(Encoding.ASCII, contents)
             ?? TestCodePage(Encoding.Default, contents); // likely Unicode
    }

It may be useful

string path = @"address/to/the/file.extension";

using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(path))
{ 
    Console.WriteLine(sr.CurrentEncoding);                        
}