Overview of Character Encoding

Character encoding refers to the mechanism by which numeric digital data is used to represent characters, including alphanumeric characters and punctuation, in languages around the world.  To ensure that different machines can represent the same thing on-screen, each machine can reference one or more of the supported file encoding types, which are standards for representation of characters. For example, a machine in the United Kingdom will represent the letter "A" sent from a machine in the United States if they are using the same encoding file encoding types. 

In many languages around the world, the representation of all characters requires hundreds and even thousands of characters. As a result, encodings for these regions may require a larger number of bits to represent all aspects of the language.

The platform supports a global file encoding type. By default, this encoding type is UTF-8. For more information, see Configure Global File Encoding Type. 

Character Encoding on Input

By default,  supports UTF-8 on input. As needed, individual users can change the file encoding of input files. For example, a file that is ingested with a double-byte encoding can be identified as such for the product in the file settings during import, so that the data can be properly parsed during input.

Character Encoding within the Application

Within the , you can use the following functions to modify character encodings:

Character Encoding on Output

All files are published with UTF-8 encoding.