Get Text File Encoding

Text files can be stored using different encodings, and to correctly reading them, you must specify the encoding. That’s why most cmdlets dealing with text file reading offer the -Encoding parameter (for example, Get-Content). If you don’t specify the correct encoding, you are likely ending up with messed up special characters and umlauts.

Yet how do you (automatically) determine the encoding a given text file uses? Here is a handy function that can help:

function Get-Encoding
{
  param
  (
    [Parameter(Mandatory,ValueFromPipeline,ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName)]
    [Alias('FullName')]
    [string]
    $Path
  )

  process 
  {
    $bom = New-Object -TypeName System.Byte[](4)
        
    $file = New-Object System.IO.FileStream($Path, 'Open', 'Read')
    
    $null = $file.Read($bom,0,4)
    $file.Close()
    $file.Dispose()
    
    $enc = [Text.Encoding]::ASCII
    if ($bom[0] -eq 0x2b -and $bom[1] -eq 0x2f -and $bom[2] -eq 0x76) 
      { $enc =  [Text.Encoding]::UTF7 }
    if ($bom[0] -eq 0xff -and $bom[1] -eq 0xfe) 
      { $enc =  [Text.Encoding]::Unicode }
    if ($bom[0] -eq 0xfe -and $bom[1] -eq 0xff) 
      { $enc =  [Text.Encoding]::BigEndianUnicode }
    if ($bom[0] -eq 0x00 -and $bom[1] -eq 0x00 -and $bom[2] -eq 0xfe -and $bom[3] -eq 0xff) 
      { $enc =  [Text.Encoding]::UTF32}
    if ($bom[0] -eq 0xef -and $bom[1] -eq 0xbb -and $bom[2] -eq 0xbf) 
      { $enc =  [Text.Encoding]::UTF8}
        
    [PSCustomObject]@{
      Encoding = $enc
      Path = $Path
    }
  }
}

Here is a test run checking all text files in your user profile:

 
PS> dir $home -Filter *.txt -Recurse | Get-Encoding

Encoding                    Path                                                                        
--------                    ----                                                                        
System.Text.UnicodeEncoding C:\Users\tobwe\E006_psconfeu2019.txt                                        
System.Text.UnicodeEncoding C:\Users\tobwe\E009_psconfeu2019.txt                                        
System.Text.UnicodeEncoding C:\Users\tobwe\E027_psconfeu2019.txt                                        
System.Text.ASCIIEncoding   C:\Users\tobwe\.nuget\packages\Aspose.Words\18.12.0\...
System.Text.ASCIIEncoding   C:\Users\tobwe\.vscode\extensions\ms-vscode.powers...
System.Text.UTF8Encoding    C:\Users\tobwe\.vscode\extensions\ms-vscode.powers... 
 

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