X-Recipient: archive-cygwin@delorie.com X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=-2.1 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,DKIM_SIGNED,DKIM_VALID,DKIM_VALID_AU,FREEMAIL_FROM,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_LOW,RFC_ABUSE_POST,T_TO_NO_BRKTS_FREEMAIL X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: References: Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2011 22:36:57 +0000 Message-ID: Subject: Re: File output Question From: Andy Koppe To: cygwin@cygwin.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-IsSubscribed: yes Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help@cygwin.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner@cygwin.com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin@cygwin.com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin@cygwin.com On 3 January 2011 03:04, ERIC HO wrote: > Looking at this closer, I've found the file contains hex '00' between cha= racters. In vim, it displays ^@ for hex '00'. So it looks unreadable. But w= hen I use cat or tail commands, it strips off hex '00' and looks readable. = For example. in vim, it displays: > > P^@r^@o^@d^@u^@c^@t^@: > With cat and tail, the output displays Product: Apparently the file is encoded in little-endian UTF-16, which is Windows' favoured Unicode encoding. That effectively inserts a NUL byte after each ASCII byte. The ^@ is caret notation for NUL. When sending the file directly to the terminal with cat or tail, the terminal will simply ignore the NUL bytes, whereas vim makes an attempt to show you the whole content of the file. UTF-16 files ought to have the so-called Byte Order Mark (BOM) for indicating little-endian or big-endian at the start, and vim automatically recognises a file as UTF-16 when that's there. Your file doesn't appear to have that though, so vim interprets it as ASCII instead. Andy -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple