Unicode / UTF-8 support

UltraEdit / UEStudio provides support for Unicode (16-bit wide character, or UTF-16) and UTF-8 files. You can directly edit UTF-8 and UTF-16 files and convert them between ANSI and Unicode formats. UltraEdit / UEStudio will attempt to detect the file's encoding type when the file is loaded. It will look for the FF FE mark for Unicode (UTF-16) files. For UTF-8 it will look for one of the following three occurrences:

1. Byte order mark (BOM): EF BB BF.
2. String occurrences "charset=utf-8" or "encoding=utf-8" in the file.
3. The occurrence of valid UTF-8 multi-byte characters in the first 64KB of the file.

If the file is determined to be Unicode, it will be treated as such and the status bar will indicate this. A Unicode file saved in big endian format will be indicated with "UTF-16BE". A Unicode file saved in little endian format will be indicated with "UTF-16".

If the file is determined to be UTF-8, it will be treated as such and on open, it will be converted internally to Unicode (16-bit) for editing. The status bar will indicate this with "UTF-8". When the file is saved, it will be converted back from Unicode to UTF-8 and saved in this format.

You can convert files between different encoding formats using the two following methods:

• Via the "Encoding" drop down in the Save as dialog
• Via the Conversions drop down in the Advanced tab.

The encoding selector in the status bar only changes the encoding used to view the file. It does not actually change the file's underlying encoding type.