On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 10:06:45PM +0100, Matthias Apitz wrote: > I have mail in mutt with the an encoded Subject: line which seems to decode > wrong (the German Umlaut ü is not shown); how could I decode the line > > Subject: > =?UTF-8?B?Uu+/vWNrc2VuZHVuZyAoTnIuIEUtQS0yMTcyKSBhYmdlc2NobG9zc2Vu?= > > to UTF-8 chars to check what is wrong? Thanks You can use the "base64" command on the part between "=?UTF-8?B?" and "?=": $ echo -n 'Uu+/vWNrc2VuZHVuZyAoTnIuIEUtQS0yMTcyKSBhYmdlc2NobG9zc2Vu' | base64 -d
Looking at the result, where you are supposed to have a "ü", you get the hexadecimal number 0xEFBFBD. This is the UTF-8 value of character U+FFFD, which is describe as "REPLACEMENT CHARACTER" in Unicode standard. My guess is that "ü" was originally correctly written, then read with a mail program or operating system not able to understand or display it. Because of this the "replacement character" was used, and then reused in a mail reply. First time I see that. -- Bernard Massot
