The default external encoding is set by locale encoding or the interpreter -E option. By default Ruby sets the external encoding of an IO object to the default external encoding. See Encoding.find('filesystem') External encoding ¶ ↑Įach IO object has an external encoding which indicates the encoding that Ruby will use to read its data. This is used for strings of file names or paths. The default encoding of strings from the filesystem of the environment. See Encoding.locale_charmap, Encoding.find('locale') Filesystem encoding ¶ ↑ Ruby source files should declare its script encoding by a magic comment even when they only depend on US-ASCII strings or regular expressions. Ruby -K will change the default locale encoding, but this is not recommended. The _ENCODING_ keyword returns the script encoding of the file which the keyword is written: # encoding: ISO-8859-1 _ENCODING_ #=> # The comment must contain the word coding or encoding, followed by a colon, space and the Encoding name or alias: # encoding: UTF-8 'some string'.

The default script encoding is Encoding::UTF-8 after v2.0, but it can be changed by a magic comment on the first line of the source code file (or second line, if there is a shebang line on the first). encoding #=> # Script encoding ¶ ↑Īll Ruby script code has an associated Encoding which any String literal created in the source code will be associated to.

See String#encode for the various forms of transcoding, and the Encoding::Converter class for additional control over the transcoding process. Its associated encoding is also set to the other encoding.

translate its internal byte representation to another encoding. Second, it is possible to transcode a string, i.e. This is how you can tell Ruby the correct encoding of a string. The associated Encoding of a String can be changed in two different ways.įirst, it is possible to set the Encoding of a string to a new Encoding without changing the internal byte representation of the string, with String#force_encoding. This is useful when you use ASCII-8BIT characters with other ASCII compatible characters. But as the name insists, its characters in the range of ASCII are considered as ASCII characters. encode 'ISO-8859-1' #=> 'some string'Įncoding::ASCII_8BIT is a special encoding that is usually used for a byte string, not a character string. Ruby methods dealing with encodings return or accept Encoding instances as arguments (when a method accepts an Encoding instance as an argument, it can be passed an Encoding name or alias instead). It has a name and optionally, aliases: Encoding :: ISO_8859_1. It is defined as a constant under the Encoding namespace. An Encoding instance represents a character encoding usable in Ruby.

Ruby change text encoding