How to check encoding of a CSV file

Question

I have a CSV file and I wish to understand its encoding  Is there a menu option in Microsoft Excel that can help me detect it  OR do I need to make use of programming languages like C  or PHP to deduce it

User · Answer

If you use Python  just use a print   function to check the encoding of a csv file  For example   with open  file name csv   as f      print f    The output is something like this    lt  io TextIOWrapper name  file name csv  mode  r  encoding  utf8  gt

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Or you can execute in python console or in Jupyter Notebook  import csv data   open  quot file csv quot   quot r quot    data  You will see information about the data object like this   lt  io TextIOWrapper name  arch csv  mode  r  encoding  cp1250  gt   As you can see it contains encoding infotmation

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You can use Notepad   to evaluate a file s encoding without needing to write code  The evaluated encoding of the open file will display on the bottom bar  far right side  The encodings supported can be seen by going to Settings - gt  Preferences - gt  New Document Default Directory and looking in the drop down

User · Answer

In Linux systems  you can use file command  It will give the correct encoding  Sample   file blah csv   Output   blah csv  ISO-8859 text  with very long lines

User · Answer

You can also use python chardet library    install the chardet library  pip install chardet    import the chardet library import chardet     use the detect method to find the encoding    rb  means read in the file as binary with open  test csv    rb   as file      print chardet detect file read

User · Answer

In Python  You can Try     from encodings aliases import aliases alias values   set aliases values     for encoding in set aliases values         try          df pd read csv  test csv   encoding encoding          print  successful   encoding      except          pass

User · Answer

Use chardet https   github com chardet chardet  documentation is short and easy to read     Install python  then pip install chardet  at last use the command line command   I tested under GB2312 and it s pretty accurate   Make sure you have at least a few characters  sample with only 1 character may fail easily    file is not reliable as you can see

[csv] How to check encoding of a CSV file

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