File- and Folder-supported encoding names

The following list of names is a basic set of encoding names supported by the File object. Some of the character encoders are built in, while the operating system is queried for most of the other encoders. Depending on the language packs installed, some of the encodings may not be available. Names that refer to the same encoding are listed in one line. Underlines are replaced with dashes before matching an encoding name.

The File object processes an extended Unicode character with a value greater that 65535 as a Unicode surrogate pair (two characters in the range between 0xD700-0xDFFF).

Built-in encodings are:

US-ASCII, ASCII,ISO646-US,I SO-646.IRV:1991, ISO-IR-6,
ANSI-X3.4-1968,CP367,IBM367,US,ISO646.1991-IRV
UCS-2,UCS2, ISO-10646-UCS-2
UCS2LE,UCS-2LE,ISO-10646-UCS-2LE
UCS2BE,UCS-2BE,ISO-10646-UCS-2BE
UCS-4,UCS4, ISO-10646-UCS-4
UCS4LE,UCS-4LE,ISO-10646-UCS-4LE
UCS4BE,UCS-4BE,ISO-10646-UCS-4BE
UTF-8,UTF8,UNICODE-1-1-UTF-8,UNICODE-2-0-UTF-8,X-UNICODE-2-0-UTF-8
UTF16,UTF-16,ISO-10646-UTF-16
UTF16LE,UTF-16LE,ISO-10646-UTF-16LE
UTF16BE,UTF-16BE,ISO-10646-UTF-16BE
CP1252,WINDOWS-1252,MS-ANSI
ISO-8859-1,ISO-8859-1,ISO-8859-1:1987,ISO-IR-100,LATIN1
MACINTOSH,X-MAC-ROMAN
BINARY

The ASCII encoder raises errors for characters greater than 127, and the BINARY encoder simply converts between bytes and Unicode characters by using the lower 8 bits. The latter encoder is convenient for reading and writing binary data.

Additional encodings

In Windows, all encodings use code pages, which are assigned numeric values. The usual Western character set that Windows uses, for example, is the code page 1252. You can select Windows code pages by prepending the number of the code page with “CP” or “WINDOWS”: for example, “CP1252” for the code page 1252. The File object has many other built-in encoding names that match predefined code page numbers. If a code page is not present, the encoding cannot be selected.

In Mac OS, you can select encoders by name rather than by code page number. The File object queries Mac OS directly for an encoder. As far as Mac OS character sets are identical with Windows code pages, Mac OS also knows the Windows code page numbers.

In UNIX, the number of available encoders depends on the installation of the iconv library.

Common encoding names

The following encoding names are implemented both in Windows and in Mac OS:

UTF-7,UTF7,UNICODE-1-1-UTF-7,X-UNICODE-2-0-UTF-7
ISO-8859-2,ISO-8859-2,ISO-8859-2:1987,ISO-IR-101,LATIN2
ISO-8859-3,ISO-8859-3,ISO-8859-3:1988,ISO-IR-109,LATIN3
ISO-8859-4,ISO-8859-4,ISO-8859-4:1988,ISO-IR-110,LATIN4,BALTIC
ISO-8859-5,ISO-8859-5,ISO-8859-5:1988,ISO-IR-144,CYRILLIC
ISO-8859-6,ISO-8859-6,ISO-8859-6:1987,ISO-IR-127,ECMA-114,ASMO-708,ARABIC
ISO-8859-7,ISO-8859-7,ISO-8859-7:1987,ISO-IR-126,ECMA-118,ELOT-928,GREEK8,GREEK
ISO-8859-8,ISO-8859-8,ISO-8859-8:1988,ISO-IR-138,HEBREW
ISO-8859-9,ISO-8859-9,ISO-8859-9:1989,ISO-IR-148,LATIN5,TURKISH
ISO-8859-10,ISO-8859-10,ISO-8859-10:1992,ISO-IR-157,LATIN6
ISO-8859-13,ISO-8859-13,ISO-IR-179,LATIN7
ISO-8859-14,ISO-8859-14,ISO-8859-14,ISO-8859-14:1998,ISO-IR-199,LATIN8
ISO-8859-15,ISO-8859-15,ISO-8859-15:1998,ISO-IR-203
ISO-8859-16,ISO-885,ISO-885,MS-EE
CP850,WINDOWS-850,IBM850
CP866,WINDOWS-866,IBM866
CP932,WINDOWS-932,SJIS,SHIFT-JIS,X-SJIS,X-MS-SJIS,MS-SJIS,MS-KANJI
CP936,WINDOWS-936,GBK,WINDOWS-936,GB2312,GB-2312-80,ISO-IR-58,CHINESE
CP949,WINDOWS-949,UHC,KSC-5601,KS-C-5601-1987,KS-C-5601-1989,ISO-IR-149,KOREAN
CP950,WINDOWS-950,BIG5,BIG-5,BIG-FIVE,BIGFIVE,CN-BIG5,X-X-BIG5
CP1251,WINDOWS-1251,MS-CYRL
CP1252,WINDOWS-1252,MS-ANSI
CP1253,WINDOWS-1253,MS-GREEK
CP1254,WINDOWS-1254,MS-TURK
CP1255,WINDOWS-1255,MS-HEBR
CP1256,WINDOWS-1256,MS-ARAB
CP1257,WINDOWS-1257,WINBALTRIM
CP1258,WINDOWS-1258
CP1361,WINDOWS-1361,JOHAB
EUC-JP,EUCJP,X-EUC-JP
EUC-KR,EUCKR,X-EUC-KR
HZ,HZ-GB-2312
X-MAC-JAPANESE
X-MAC-GREEK
X-MAC-CYRILLIC
X-MAC-LATIN
X-MAC-ICELANDIC
X-MAC-TURKISH

Additional Windows encoding names:

CP437,IBM850,WINDOWS-437
CP709,WINDOWS-709,ASMO-449,BCONV4
EBCDIC
KOI-8R
KOI-8U
ISO-2022-JP
ISO-2022-KR

Additional Mac OS encoding names

These names are alias names for encodings that Mac OS might know:

TIS-620,TIS620,TIS620-0,TIS620.2529-1,TIS620.2533-0,TIS620.2533-1,ISO-IR-166
CP874,WINDOWS-874
JP,JIS-C6220-1969-RO,ISO646-JP,ISO-IR-14
JIS-X0201,JISX0201-1976,X0201
JIS-X0208,JIS-X0208-1983,JIS-X0208-1990,JIS0208,X0208,ISO-IR-87
JIS-X0212,JIS-X0212.1990-0,JIS-X0212-1990,X0212,ISO-IR-159
CN,GB-1988-80,ISO646-CN,ISO-IR-57
ISO-IR-16,CN-GB-ISOIR165
KSC-5601,KS-C-5601-1987,KS-C-5601-1989,ISO-IR-149
EUC-CN,EUCCN,GB2312,CN-GB
EUC-TW,EUCTW,X-EUC-TW

UNIX encodings

In UNIX, the File object looks for the presence of the iconv library, and uses whatever encoding it finds there. If you need a special encoding in UNIX, make sure that there is an iconv encoding module installed that converts between UTF-16 (the internal format that the File object uses) and the desired encoding.