If a save a text file with the following character б U+0431, but save it as an ANSI code page file.
Ruby returns ord = 63. Saving the file with UTF-8 as the codepage returns ord = 208, 177
Should I be specifically telling Ruby to handle the input encoded with a certain code page? If so, how do you do this?
Is that in ruby source code or in a file which is read with File.open? If it's in the ruby source code, you can (in ruby 1.9) add this to the top of the file:
# encoding: utf-8
Or you could specify most other encodings (like iso-8859-1).
If you are reading a file with File.open, you could do something like this:
File.open("file.txt", "r:utf-8") {|f| ... }
As with the encoding comment, you can pass in different types of encodings here too.
Related
I am reading an ISO-8859-1 encoded text file, transcoding it to UTF-8, and writing out a different file as UTF-8. However, when I inspect the output file, it is still encoded as ISO-8859-1! What am I doing wrong?
Here is my ruby class:
module EF
class Transcoder
# app_path ......... Path to the java console application (InferEncoding.jar) that infers the character encoding.
# target_encoding .. Transcodes the text loaded from the file into this encoding.
attr_accessor :app_path, :target_encoding
def initialize(consoleAppPath)
#app_path = consoleAppPath
#target_encoding = "UTF-8"
end
def detect_encoding(filename)
encoding = `java -jar #{#app_path} \"#{filename}\"`
encoding = encoding.strip
end
def transcode(filename)
original_encoding = detect_encoding(filename)
content = File.open(filename, "r:#{original_encoding}", &:read)
content = content.force_encoding(original_encoding)
content.encode!(#target_encoding, :invalid => :replace)
end
def transcode_file(input_filename, output_filename)
content = transcode(input_filename)
File.open(output_filename, "w:#{#target_encoding}") do |f|
f.write content
end
end
end
end
By way of explanation, #app_path is the path to a Java jar file. This console application will read a text file and tell me what its current encoding is (printing it to stdout). It uses the ubiquitous ICU library. (I tried using the ruby gem charlock-holmes, but I cannot get it to compile on Windows for MINGW. The Java bindings to ICU are good, so I wrote a Java application instead.)
To call the above class, I do this in irb:
require_relative 'transcoder'
tc = EF::Transcoder.new("C:/Users/paul.chernoch/Documents/java/InferEncoding.jar")
tc.detect_encoding "C:/temp/infer-encoding-test/ISO-8859-1.txt"
tc.transcode_file("C:/temp/infer-encoding-test/ISO-8859-1.txt", "C:/temp/infer-encoding-test/output-utf8.txt")
tc.detect_encoding "C:/temp/infer-encoding-test/output-utf8.txt"
The file ISO-8859-1.txt is encoded like it sounds. I used Notepad++ to write the file using that encoding.
I used my Java application to test the file. It concurs that it is in ISO-8859-1 format.
I also created a file in Notepad++ and saved it as UTF-8. I then verified using my java app that it was in UTF-8.
After I perform the above in irb, I used my java app to test the output file and it says the format is still ISO-8859-1.
What am I doing wrong? If you hard-code the method detect_encoding to return "ISO-8859-1", you do not need my java application to replicate the part that reads the file.
Any solution must NOT use charlock-holmes.
I have a simple JSON file like this:
{
"env": "Development",
"app_host": "https://localhost:3455",
"server_host": "localhost",
"server_port": "3455"
}
When I read this file using the below code, the output contains some unknown characters in the beginning.
contents = IO.read('config.json')
puts contents
output:
{
"env": "Development",
"app_host": "https://localhost:3455",
"server_host": "localhost",
"server_port": "3455"
}
Can someone let me know how to fix this?
These characters are the bytes of a UTF-8 byte order mark (BOM), being displayed as code page 437 characters.
From your comment, it seems Visual Studio is inserting a BOM into the files. When you then read the file in and try to display it in your console it is displaying as ∩╗┐, since your console’s encoding is set to CP437, and the three bytes that make up the BOM in UTF-8 (0xEF,0xBB,0xBF) correspond to those characters in that encoding.
You should probably look into changing the encoding your console is using, as well as seeing if you can configure VS not to add the BOM (I’m not on Windows so I don’t know how you would do either of those).
From the Ruby side, you could specify the encoding in your call to IO.read like this:
IO.read('config.json', :encoding => 'bom|utf-8')
This will strip the BOM when reading the file.
I wrote a simple code that reads an email from MS-Outlook, using 'win32ole', and then save its subjects to an CSV file. Everything goes well except the encoding system. When I open my CSV file the words such as "André" are printed as "Andr\x82". I want my output format to be equal to my input.
# encoding: 'CP850'
require 'win32ole'
require 'CSV'
Encoding.default_external = 'CP850'
ol = WIN32OLE.new('Outlook.Application')
inbox = ol.GetNamespace("MAPI").GetDefaultFolder(6)
email_subjecs = []
inbox.Items.each do |m|
email_subjects << m.Subject
end
CSV.open('MyFile.csv',"w") do |csv|
csv << email_subjects
end
O.S: Windows 7 64bit
Encoding.default_external -> CP850
Languadge -> PT
ruby -v -> 1.9.2p290 (2011-07-09) [i386-mingw32]
It seems a simple problem related to external windows encoding and I tryied many solution posted here but I realy can't solve this.
1) Your file name is missing a closing quote.
2) The default open mode for CSV.open() is 'rb', so you can't possibly write to a file with the code you posted.
3) You didn't post the encoding of the text you are trying to write to the file.
4) You didn't post the encoding that you want the the data to be written in.
5)
When I open my CSV file the words such as "é" are printed as "\x82"
Tell your viewing device not to do that.
The magic comment only sets the encoding the current (.rb) file should be read as. It does not set default_external. Try set RUBYOPT=-E utf-8, open your file with CSV.open('MyFile.csv', encoding: 'UTF-8'), or set Encoding.default_external at the top of your file (discouraged).
I try parse upload *.txt file and get some import DB information. But before save it I try get tring in utf-8 format. When I do that I get error:
"\xDE" from ASCII-8BIT to UTF-8
First file characters
Import data \xDE\xE4\xE5
Before parse code
# encoding: utf-8
require "iconv"
class HandlerController < ApplicationController
def add_report
utf8_format = "UTF-8"
file_data = params[:import_file].tempfile.read.encode(utf8_format)
end
end
P.S. Also I try do that with iconv but it didn't help
You need to start from a known encoding with valid content (and compatible characters for input and output) before you will be able to successfully convert a string.
ASCII-8BIT doesn't assign Unicode-compatible characters to values 128..255 - it cannot be converted to Unicode.
The chances are that the input - as you say it is text - is in some other encoding to start with. You could start by assuming ISO-8859-1 ("Latin-1") which is quite a common encoding, although you may have some other clue, or know what characters to expect in the file, in which case you should try others.
I suggest you try something like this:
file_data = params[:import_file].tempfile.read.force_encoding('ISO-8859-1')
utf8_file_data = file_data.encode(utf8_format)
This probably will not give you an error, but if my guess at 'ISO-8859-1' is wrong, it will give you gibberish unfortunately.
I have a ruby file with these contents:
# encoding: iso-8859-1
File.open('foo.txt', "w:iso-8859-1") {|f| f << 'fòo'}
puts File.read('foo.txt').encoding
When I run it from windows command prompt ruby 1.9.3 I get: IBM437
When I run it from cygwin ruby 1.9.3 I get: UTF-8
What I expect to get is: iso-8859-1
Can someone explain what's happening here?
UPDATE
Here's a better description of what I'm looking for:
I understand now thanks to Darshan that by default ruby will load files in
Encoding.default _external, but shouldn't the # encoding: iso-8859-1
line override that?
Should ruby be able to auto-detect a file's encoding? Is there any
filesystem where the encoding is an attribute?
What is my best option to 'remember' the encoding I saved the file
in?
You're not specifying the encoding when you read the file. You're being very careful to specify it everywhere except there, but then you're reading it with the default encoding.
File.open('foo.txt', "w:iso-8859-1") {|f| f << 'fòo'.force_encoding('iso-8859-1')}
File.open('foo.txt', "r:iso-8859-1") {|f| puts f.read().encoding }
# => ISO-8859-1
Also note that you probably mean 'fòo'.encode('iso-8859-1') rather than 'fòo'.force_encoding('iso-8859-1'). The latter leaves the bytes unchanged, while the former transcodes the string.
Update: I'll elaborate a bit since I wasn't as clear or thorough as I could have been.
If you don't specify an encoding with File.read(), the file will be read with Encoding.default_external. Since you're not setting that yourself, Ruby is using a value depending on the environment it's run in. In your Windows environment, it's IBM437; in your Cygwin environment, it's UTF-8. So my point above was that of course that's what the encoding is; it has to be, and it has nothing to do with what bytes are contained in the file. Ruby doesn't auto-detect encodings for you.
force_encoding() doesn't change the bytes in a string, it only changes the Encoding attached to those bytes. If you tell Ruby "pretend this string is ISO-8859-1", then it won't transcode them when you tell it "please write this string as ISO-8859-1". encode() transcodes for you, as does writing to the file if you don't trick it into not doing so.
Putting those together, if you have a source file in ISO-8859-1:
# encoding: iso-8859-1
# Write in ISO-8859-1 regardless of default_external
File.open('foo.txt', "w:iso-8859-1") {|f| f << 'fòo'}
# Read in ISO-8859-1 regardless of default_external,
# transcoding if necessary to default_internal, if set
File.open('foo.txt', "r:iso-8859-1") {|f| puts f.read().encoding } # => ISO-8859-1
puts File.read('foo.txt').encoding # -> Whatever is specified by default_external
If you have a source file in UTF-8:
# encoding: utf-8
# Write in ISO-8859-1 regardless of default_external, transcoding from UTF-8
File.open('foo.txt', "w:iso-8859-1") {|f| f << 'fòo'}
# Read in ISO-8859-1 regardless of default_external,
# transcoding if necessary to default_internal, if set
File.open('foo.txt', "r:iso-8859-1") {|f| puts f.read().encoding } # => ISO-8859-1
puts File.read('foo.txt').encoding # -> Whatever is specified by default_external
Update 2, to answer your new questions:
No, the # encoding: iso-8859-1 line does not change Encoding.default_external, it only tells Ruby that the source file itself is encoded in ISO-8859-1. Simply add
Encoding.default_external = "iso-8859-1"
if you expect all files that your read to be stored in that encoding.
No, I don't personally think Ruby should auto-detect encodings, but reasonable people can disagree on that one, and a discussion of "should it be so" seems off-topic here.
Personally, I use UTF-8 for everything, and in the rare circumstances that I can't control encoding, I manually set the encoding when I read the file, as demonstrated above. My source files are always in UTF-8. If you're dealing with files that you can't control and don't know the encoding of, the charguess gem or similar would be useful.