What it does
Enca detects a text file's character set and offers command-line conversion through its own components or configured converters.
Enca detects a text file’s character encoding and can convert it through built-in components or optional external converters. Check the detection language against its documented list, which includes Central and Eastern European languages and Chinese, plus language-neutral multibyte cases. That scope matters when a file comes from an unfamiliar script. Available conversion routes depend on the build and installed backends such as libiconv or librecode. The older homepage remains the project entry point, while its linked repository now continues under Project-OSS-Revival with GPL 2 source. The source build expects a POSIX and ISO C environment.
Strengths
- Encoding detection and conversion in one command-line utility
Watch out for
- Language-dependent detection covers a defined language list
Best for
- Recovering readable text from older encodings
Sources
- Enca - Michal Čihař (Oct 26, 2026)
- raw.githubusercontent.com (Oct 26, 2026)
- Enca | Michal Čihař (Oct 26, 2026)
- Enca | Project-OSS-Revival official continuation (Oct 26, 2026)