uchardet

uchardet is an encoding detector library, which takes a sequence of bytes in an unknown character encoding without any additional information, and attempts to determine the encoding of the text. Returned encoding names are iconv-compatible.

uchardet started as a C language binding of the original C++ implementation of the universal charset detection library by Mozilla. It can now detect more charsets, and more reliably than the original implementation.

The original code of universalchardet is available at http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/extensions/universalchardet/

Techniques used by universalchardet are described at http://www.mozilla.org/projects/intl/UniversalCharsetDetection.html

Supported Languages/Encodings

• International (Unicode)
  • UTF-8
  • UTF-16BE / UTF-16LE
  • UTF-32BE / UTF-32LE / X-ISO-10646-UCS-4-34121 / X-ISO-10646-UCS-4-21431
• Arabic
  • ISO-8859-6
  • WINDOWS-1256
• Bulgarian
  • ISO-8859-5
  • WINDOWS-1251
• Chinese
  • ISO-2022-CN
  • BIG5
  • EUC-TW
  • GB18030
  • HZ-GB-2312
• Croatian:
  • ISO-8859-2
  • ISO-8859-13
  • ISO-8859-16
  • Windows-1250
  • IBM852
  • MAC-CENTRALEUROPE
• Czech
  • Windows-1250
  • ISO-8859-2
  • IBM852
  • MAC-CENTRALEUROPE
• Danish
  • ISO-8859-1
  • ISO-8859-15
  • WINDOWS-1252
• English
  • ASCII
• Esperanto
  • ISO-8859-3
• Estonian
  • ISO-8859-4
  • ISO-8859-13
  • ISO-8859-13
  • Windows-1252
  • Windows-1257
• Finnish
  • ISO-8859-1
  • ISO-8859-4
  • ISO-8859-9
  • ISO-8859-13
  • ISO-8859-15
  • WINDOWS-1252
• French
  • ISO-8859-1
  • ISO-8859-15
  • WINDOWS-1252
• German
  • ISO-8859-1
  • WINDOWS-1252
• Greek
  • ISO-8859-7
  • WINDOWS-1253
• Hebrew
  • ISO-8859-8
  • WINDOWS-1255
• Hungarian:
  • ISO-8859-2
  • WINDOWS-1250
• Irish Gaelic
  • ISO-8859-1
  • ISO-8859-9
  • ISO-8859-15
  • WINDOWS-1252
• Italian
  • ISO-8859-1
  • ISO-8859-3
  • ISO-8859-9
  • ISO-8859-15
  • WINDOWS-1252
• Japanese
  • ISO-2022-JP
  • SHIFT_JIS
  • EUC-JP
• Korean
  • ISO-2022-KR
  • EUC-KR / UHC
• Lithuanian
  • ISO-8859-4
  • ISO-8859-10
  • ISO-8859-13
• Latvian
  • ISO-8859-4
  • ISO-8859-10
  • ISO-8859-13
• Maltese
  • ISO-8859-3
• Polish:
  • ISO-8859-2
  • ISO-8859-13
  • ISO-8859-16
  • Windows-1250
  • IBM852
  • MAC-CENTRALEUROPE
• Portuguese
  • ISO-8859-1
  • ISO-8859-9
  • ISO-8859-15
  • WINDOWS-1252
• Romanian:
  • ISO-8859-2
  • ISO-8859-16
  • Windows-1250
  • IBM852
• Russian
  • ISO-8859-5
  • KOI8-R
  • WINDOWS-1251
  • MAC-CYRILLIC
  • IBM866
  • IBM855
• Slovak
  • Windows-1250
  • ISO-8859-2
  • IBM852
  • MAC-CENTRALEUROPE
• Slovene
  • ISO-8859-2
  • ISO-8859-16
  • Windows-1250
  • IBM852
  • MAC-CENTRALEUROPE
• Spanish
  • ISO-8859-1
  • ISO-8859-15
  • WINDOWS-1252
• Swedish
  • ISO-8859-1
  • ISO-8859-4
  • ISO-8859-9
  • ISO-8859-15
  • WINDOWS-1252
• Thai
  • TIS-620
  • ISO-8859-11
• Turkish:
  • ISO-8859-3
  • ISO-8859-9
• Vietnamese:
  • VISCII
  • Windows-1258
• Others
  • WINDOWS-1252

Installation

Debian/Ubuntu/Mint

apt-get install uchardet libuchardet-dev

Mageia

urpmi libuchardet libuchardet-devel

Fedora

dnf install uchardet uchardet-devel

Gentoo

emerge uchardet

Mac

brew install uchardet

Windows

Binary packages are provided in Fedora and Msys2 repositories. There may exist other pre-built packages but I am not aware of them. Nevertheless the library is very easily and quickly compilable under Windows as well, so finding a binary package is not necessary. Some did it successfully with the CMake Windows installer and MinGW. It should be possible to use MinGW-w64 instead of MinGW, in particular to build both 32 and 64-bit DLL libraries).

Note also that it is very easily cross-buildable (for instance from a GNU/Linux machine).

Build from source

Releases are available from: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/uchardet/releases/

If you prefer a development version, clone the git repository:

git clone https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/uchardet/uchardet.git

The source can be browsed at: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/uchardet/uchardet

cmake .
make
make install

Build with flatpak-builder

Here is a working "module" section to include in your Flatpak's json manifest:

"modules": [
    {
        "name": "uchardet",
        "buildsystem": "cmake",
        "builddir": true,
        "config-opts": [ "-DCMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR=lib" ],
        "sources": [
            {
                ...
            }
        ]
    }
]

Usage

Command Line

uchardet Command Line Tool
Version 0.0.7

Authors: BYVoid, Jehan
Bug Report: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/uchardet/uchardet/-/issues

Usage:
 uchardet [Options] [File]...

Options:
 -v, --version         Print version and build information.
 -h, --help            Print this help.

Library

See uchardet.h

Related Projects

• python-chardet Python port
• ruby-rchardet Ruby port
• juniversalchardet Java port of universalchardet
• jchardet Java port of chardet
• nuniversalchardet C# port of universalchardet
• nchardet C# port of chardet
• uchardet-enhanced A fork of mozilla universalchardet
• rust-uchardet Rust language binding of uchardet
• libchardet Another C/C++ API wrapping Mozilla code.

Used by

• mpv for subtitle detection
• Tepl
• Nextcloud IOS app
• Codelite
• …

Licenses

• Mozilla Public License Version 1.1
• GNU General Public License, version 2.0 or later.
• GNU Lesser General Public License, version 2.1 or later.

See the file COPYING for the complete text of these 3 licenses.

Code of Conduct

The uchardet project is hosted by freedesktop.org and as such follows its code of conduct. In other words, it means we will treat anyone with respect and expect anyone to do the same.

Please read freedesktop.org Code of Conduct.

In case of any problem regarding abusive behavior in uchardet project, please contact the maintainer (Jehan) or create a bug report (possibly private if needed).