Set global default encoding for ruby 1.9

Question

I want to tell ruby that everything is utf8, except when stated otherwise, so I dont have to place these # encoding: utf-8 comments everywhere.

Loon

Answer 1

You can either:

1. set your RUBYOPT environment variable to "-E utf-8"
2. or use https://github.com/m-ryan/magic_encoding

Vermiculite

#1 is not very portable, and #2 is not very nice, but it is at least automatic :) – Loon

#1 crashes my Ruby keyboard on Windows 10 + Ruby 2.2. ie, as soon as I try to write any accent, the keyboard stops working on the ruby console (except for interrupts). – Wurth

@Cyril Duchon-Doris the answer was for Ruby 1.9 since ruby 2 UTF-8 is the default encoding. – Vermiculite

Answer 2

If you're using environment variables, the general way is to use LC_ALL / LANG

Neither is set : fallback to US-ASCII

$ LC_ALL= LANG= ruby -e 'p Encoding.default_external'
#<Encoding:US-ASCII>

Either is set : that value is used

$ LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 LANG= ruby -e 'p Encoding.default_external'
#<Encoding:UTF-8>

$ LC_ALL= LANG=en_US.UTF-8 ruby -e 'p Encoding.default_external'
#<Encoding:UTF-8>

Both are set : LC_ALL takes precedence

$ LC_ALL=C LANG=en_US.UTF-8 ruby -e 'p Encoding.default_external'
#<Encoding:US-ASCII>

$ LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 LANG=C ruby -e 'p Encoding.default_external'
#<Encoding:UTF-8>

Cursed

This is the correct answer if someone needs to add enconding systemwide. – Ingles

What about if I don't have the LC_ALL environment variable on my system. It says that LC_ALL is undefined when I try to use it. – Homoousian

The above examples are shell code, not Ruby code. To check the value of LC_ALL in Ruby, use ENV['LC_ALL'] – Cursed

Answer 3

I just upgraded from 1.9 to 2.0, but for some reason the default external encoding was still set to ASCII. I was able to fix it by typing the following in Terminal:

export RUBYOPT='-E utf-8'

Petrina