Determine a PowerShell's session encoding
$defaultEncoding = `
[psobject].Assembly.GetType('System.Management.Automation.ClrFacade'). `
GetMethod('GetDefaultEncoding', [System.Reflection.BindingFlags]'nonpublic,static'). `
Invoke($null, @())
$defaultEncoding.BodyName
$defaultEncoding.CodePage
$defaultEncoding.GetType().FullName
Encodings of Scripts
In order to gain some clarity on the required encoding of
PowerShell scripts, I created three scripts in different encodings that write
- the PowerShell version (
psVersionTable.psVersion),
- the encoding with which the scripts are encoded and
ïthe length of the string
'Bär'.
The three encodings with which the scripts are encoded are
For example, the script encoded in UTF-8 without a bom is:
"PowerShell version: $($psVersionTable.psVersion)"
"This file is encoded in utf-8 without a bom"
'Bär'.length
I used these scripts in PowerShell 7.1 and PowerShell 5.1. The following is a summary of the results.
Invocation in PowerShell 7.1
In PowerShell 7.1, the length of 'Bär' is always determined to be 3:
PS> .\script-latin1.ps1
PowerShell version: 7.1.0-preview.6
This file is encoded in latin1
3
PS> .\script-utf8.ps1
PowerShell version: 7.1.0-preview.6
This file is encoded in utf-8 without a bom
3
PS> .\script-utf8-bom.ps1
PowerShell version: 7.1.0-preview.6
This file is encoded in utf-8 with a bom
3
As per
Michael Klement's answer on
Stackoverflow to a related question of mine, the reason that length is reported as
3, even though the script is encoded in Latin-1, is because the
ä is encoded as
Unicode U+FFFD (which is used to indicate a character whose value is unknown in Unicode).
PowerShell 5.1
In PowerShell 5.1 however, the length differs between latin-1 and
UTF-8 if a script
BOM is indicated:
PS> .\script-latin1.ps1
PowerShell version: 5.1.19041.610
This file is encoded in latin1
3
PS> .\script-utf8.ps1
PowerShell version: 5.1.19041.610
This file is encoded in utf-8 without a bom
4
PS> .\script-utf8-bom.ps1
PowerShell version: 5.1.19041.610
This file is encoded in utf-8 with a bom
3