class Encoding

Returns the hash of available encoding alias and original encoding name.

Encoding.aliases
#=> {"BINARY"=>"ASCII-8BIT", "ASCII"=>"US-ASCII", "ANSI_X3.4-1968"=>"US-ASCII",
      "SJIS"=>"Windows-31J", "eucJP"=>"EUC-JP", "CP932"=>"Windows-31J"}

Checks the compatibility of two objects.

If the objects are both strings they are compatible when they are concatenatable. The encoding of the concatenated string will be returned if they are compatible, nil if they are not.

Encoding.compatible?("\xa1".force_encoding("iso-8859-1"), "b")
#=> #<Encoding:ISO-8859-1>

Encoding.compatible?(
  "\xa1".force_encoding("iso-8859-1"),
  "\xa1\xa1".force_encoding("euc-jp"))
#=> nil

If the objects are non-strings their encodings are compatible when they have an encoding and: * Either encoding is US-ASCII compatible * One of the encodings is a 7-bit encoding

Returns default external encoding.

The default external encoding is used by default for strings created from the following locations:

• CSV

• File data read from disk

• SDBM

• StringIO

• Zlib::GzipReader

• Zlib::GzipWriter

• String#inspect

• Regexp#inspect

While strings created from these locations will have this encoding, the encoding may not be valid. Be sure to check String#valid_encoding?.

File data written to disk will be transcoded to the default external encoding when written, if default_internal is not nil.

The default external encoding is initialized by the -E option. If -E isn’t set, it is initialized to UTF-8 on Windows and the locale on other operating systems.

Sets default external encoding. You should not set Encoding::default_external in ruby code as strings created before changing the value may have a different encoding from strings created after the value was changed., instead you should use ruby -E to invoke ruby with the correct default_external.

See Encoding::default_external for information on how the default external encoding is used.

Returns default internal encoding. Strings will be transcoded to the default internal encoding in the following places if the default internal encoding is not nil:

• CSV

• Etc.sysconfdir and Etc.systmpdir

• File data read from disk

• File names from Dir

• Integer#chr

• String#inspect and Regexp#inspect

• Strings returned from Readline

• Strings returned from SDBM

• Time#zone

• Values from ENV

• Values in ARGV including $PROGRAM_NAME

Additionally String#encode and String#encode! use the default internal encoding if no encoding is given.

The script encoding (ENCODING), not default_internal, is used as the encoding of created strings.

Encoding::default_internal is initialized with -E option or nil otherwise.

Sets default internal encoding or removes default internal encoding when passed nil. You should not set Encoding::default_internal in ruby code as strings created before changing the value may have a different encoding from strings created after the change. Instead you should use ruby -E to invoke ruby with the correct default_internal.

See Encoding::default_internal for information on how the default internal encoding is used.

Search the encoding with specified name. name should be a string.

Encoding.find("US-ASCII")  #=> #<Encoding:US-ASCII>

Names which this method accept are encoding names and aliases including following special aliases

“external” : default external encoding

“internal” : default internal encoding

“locale” : locale encoding

“filesystem” : filesystem encoding

An ArgumentError is raised when no encoding with name. Only Encoding.find("internal") however returns nil when no encoding named “internal”, in other words, when Ruby has no default internal encoding.

Returns the list of loaded encodings.

Encoding.list
#=> [#<Encoding:ASCII-8BIT>, #<Encoding:UTF-8>,
      #<Encoding:ISO-2022-JP (dummy)>]

Encoding.find("US-ASCII")
#=> #<Encoding:US-ASCII>

Encoding.list
#=> [#<Encoding:ASCII-8BIT>, #<Encoding:UTF-8>,
      #<Encoding:US-ASCII>, #<Encoding:ISO-2022-JP (dummy)>]

Returns the locale charmap name. It returns nil if no appropriate information.

Debian GNU/Linux
  LANG=C
    Encoding.locale_charmap  #=> "ANSI_X3.4-1968"
  LANG=ja_JP.EUC-JP
    Encoding.locale_charmap  #=> "EUC-JP"

SunOS 5
  LANG=C
    Encoding.locale_charmap  #=> "646"
  LANG=ja
    Encoding.locale_charmap  #=> "eucJP"

The result is highly platform dependent. So Encoding.find(Encoding.locale_charmap) may cause an error. If you need some encoding object even for unknown locale, Encoding.find(“locale”) can be used.

Returns the list of available encoding names.

Encoding.name_list
#=> ["US-ASCII", "ASCII-8BIT", "UTF-8",
      "ISO-8859-1", "Shift_JIS", "EUC-JP",
      "Windows-31J",
      "BINARY", "CP932", "eucJP"]

Returns whether ASCII-compatible or not.

Encoding::UTF_8.ascii_compatible?     #=> true
Encoding::UTF_16BE.ascii_compatible?  #=> false

Returns true for dummy encodings. A dummy encoding is an encoding for which character handling is not properly implemented. It is used for stateful encodings.

Encoding::ISO_2022_JP.dummy?       #=> true
Encoding::UTF_8.dummy?             #=> false

Returns a string which represents the encoding for programmers.

Encoding::UTF_8.inspect       #=> "#<Encoding:UTF-8>"
Encoding::ISO_2022_JP.inspect #=> "#<Encoding:ISO-2022-JP (dummy)>"

The name of the encoding.

Encoding::UTF_8.name      #=> "UTF-8"

Returns the list of name and aliases of the encoding.

Encoding::WINDOWS_31J.names  #=> ["Windows-31J", "CP932", "csWindows31J", "SJIS", "PCK"]