On 20/12/10 17:53, Alec Battles wrote:
I seem to remember that 'file' in Linux detects encodings, but it's
also a matter of calling it by the exact same name...
There is no foolproof way of detecting encoding unfortunately - you just
need to know what it is before you read the file.
That's interesting. I wonder if there's a mathematical proof of the
'undecidability' of text encodings.
Hofstadter describes the problem in Godel, Escher, Bach as the "Envelope
Problem" IIRC - you need to have some idea of how to decode any message
you are sent, and you even need to understand that it is a "message".
UNIX manages the latter for us by providing a filename - but how to
interpret the contents is entirely up to you. It might be UTF-8, it
might be a jpeg, it might be encrypted using AES. You need to know what
to expect to try and interpret the contents.
I bet there is a name for this (although probably not a proof), but I
don't know what it is ;)
Cheers,
Doug.
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