chardetect - Man Page

chardetect – takes one or more file paths and reports their detected encodings

Synopsis

chardetect [-h] [--minimal] [-l] [-e ENCODING_ERA] [--version] [input ...]

Options

Positional Arguments

input

File whose encoding we would like to determine. (default: stdin)

Optional Arguments

-h,  --help

Show a help message and exit.

--minimal

Print only the encoding to standard output.

-l,  --legacy

Rename legacy encodings to more modern ones.

-e,  --encoding-era ENCODING_ERA

Which era of encodings to consider (default: MODERN_WEB). Choices: MODERN_WEB, LEGACY_ISO, LEGACY_MAC, LEGACY_REGIONAL, DOS, MAINFRAME, ALL

--version

Show program’s version number and exit.

Info

February 2026