> On 23 May 2016, at 20:19, Robert J. Hansen <r...@sixdemonbag.org> wrote:
> 
> Is there any way to determine the encoding for a user ID string?
> 
> At first blush it appears the answer is "no, but most people use UTF-8."

You can tell fairly reliably if someone is using either vanilla ascii or UTF8, 
in the cases of "7-bit characters only" and "8 bit characters in strictly valid 
UTF8 order" respectively. An off the shelf UTF8 validator should be able to do 
that for you. 

In the case of "all 8-bit characters, no 7-bit" you're dealing with either a 
practical joker or EBCDIC. Same thing really...

After that you're into heuristics. There are quite a few programs out there 
that attempt to detect encodings statistically, but with such a short string of 
data you might as well pick a number. ;-)

A

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