File Encoding

In order for computers to understand each other and to be able to represent the large amount of different languages characters and symbols, encodings are needed. Encodings are a way of defining a set where numbers correspond to a certain symbol.

Supported File Encodings

We support the following encodings (and only these, see below)

• utf-8
• utf-8-sig (or utf-8 with BOM)
• ascii
• windows-1252
• iso-8859-1 (also called latin1)

UTF8

We strongly recommend you to stick to UTF-8 as this is the most common used character encoding for the web and it is also the recommended encoding in the HTML 5 Specification.

Learn about UTF 8

Here is a good explanation from YouTuber Alex that explains UTF-8 encoding.

In Practice

You can use multiple common tools or programming languages in order to create UTF-8 encoded files.

Using a Text Editor

• Open your file in a good text editor like Sublime Text
• Click File in the top-left corner
• Click Save with Encoding...
• Click UTF-8

Using Programming

Python

from pathlib import Path
file_path.write_text(content, "utf-8")

C#

var utf8WithoutBom = new System.Text.UTF8Encoding(false);
File.WriteAllText(_fileName, content, utf8WithoutBom);

Java

try (
    FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream(file);
    OutputStreamWriter osw = new OutputStreamWriter(fos, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
    BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(osw)) {
      writer.append(line);
}

Rust

use std::fs::File;
let mut file = File::create(file_name)?;
file.write_all(b"content")?;

Why Not More Encodings?

There are multiple other encodings not listed above. We do not support sending us files using other encodings than the list above. This is a decision taken weighing in complexity vs benefit vs error proneness.

References

• RFC3629
• Wikipedia
• HTML 5 Specification