CODEWITHSUNDEEP
character-encodingarabic
MobTech
MobTech

Reputation: 59

Character Encoding not resolved

I have a text file with unknown character formatting, below is a snapshot

\216\175\217\133\217\136\216\185 \216\167\217\132\217\133\216\177\216\163\216\169 \216\163\217\130\217\136\217\137 \217\134\217\129\217\136\216\176\216\167\217\139 \217\133\217\134 \216\167\217\132\217\130\217\136\216\167\217\134\217\138\217\134

Anyone has an idea how can I convert it to normal text?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 68

Answers (1)

tripleee
tripleee

Reputation: 189477

This is apparently how Lua stores strings. Each \nnn represents a single byte where nnn is the byte's value in decimal. (A similar notation is commonly used for octal, which threw me off for longer than I would like to admit. I should have noticed that there were digits 8 and 9 in the data!) This particular string is just plain old UTF-8.

$ perl -ple 's/\\(\d{3})/chr($1)/ge' <<<'\216\175\217\133\217\136\216\185 \216\167\217\132\217\133\216\177\216\163\216\169 \216\163\217\130\217\136\217\137 \217\134\217\129\217\136\216\176\216\167\217\139 \217\133\217\134 \216\167\217\132\217\130\217\136\216\167\217\134\217\138\217\134'
دموع المرأة أقوى نفوذاً من القوانين

You would obviously get a similar result simply by printing the string from Lua, though I'm not familiar enough with the language to tell you how exactly to do that.

Post scriptum: I had to look this up for other reasons, so here's how to execute Lua from the command line.

lua -e 'print("\216\175\217\133\217\136\216\185 \216\167\217\132\217\133\216\177\216\163\216\169 \216\163\217\130\217\136\217\137 \217\134\217\129\217\136\216\176\216\167\217\139 \217\133\217\134 \216\167\217\132\217\130\217\136\216\167\217\134\217\138\217\134")'

Upvotes: 1

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