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

Here's my take how to detect the Unicode family of text encodings via BOM. The accuracy of this method is low, as this method only works on text files (specifically Unicode files), and defaults to ascii when no BOM is present (like most text editors, the default would be UTF8 if you want to match the HTTP/web ecosystem).

Update 2018: I no longer recommend this method. I recommend using file.exe from GIT or *nix tools as recommended by @Sybren, and I show how to do that via PowerShell in a later answer.

# from https://gist.github.com/zommarin/1480974
function Get-FileEncoding($Path) {
    $bytes = [byte[]](Get-Content $Path -Encoding byte -ReadCount 4 -TotalCount 4)

    if(!$bytes) { return 'utf8' }

    switch -regex ('{0:x2}{1:x2}{2:x2}{3:x2}' -f $bytes[0],$bytes[1],$bytes[2],$bytes[3]) {
        '^efbbbf'   { return 'utf8' }
        '^2b2f76'   { return 'utf7' }
        '^fffe'     { return 'unicode' }
        '^feff'     { return 'bigendianunicode' }
        '^0000feff' { return 'utf32' }
        default     { return 'ascii' }
    }
}

dir ~\Documents\WindowsPowershell -File | 
    select Name,@{Name='Encoding';Expression={Get-FileEncoding $_.FullName}} | 
    ft -AutoSize

Recommendation: This can work reasonably well if the dir, ls, or Get-ChildItem only checks known text files, and when you're only looking for "bad encodings" from a known list of tools. (i.e. SQL Management Studio defaults to UTF16, which broke GIT auto-cr-lf for Windows, which was the default for many years.)