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Handling text files encoded in little-endian UTF-16 with BOM

From
Mateusz Loskot <mateusz@loskot.net>
Date
Jul 5, 2019, 11:35 UTC
Message-ID
<CABUeae_90xG7avh1yt2_X78pmpYUvLtXAZ2Kd9A=FpcEayvi-Q@mail.gmail.com>
Hi,
Using git version 2.22.0.windows.1

I have a repository with number of .txt files encoded in little-endian UTF-16 with BOM.

What are the best practice and recommended configuration to manage such files with Git to avoid unexpected re-encoding to UTF-8 or others?

Currently, there is .gitattriuts with entries like
   resource/*.txt   working-tree-encoding=UTF-16LE-BOM -text

Despite that some of team members have noticed that the files occacionally get re-encoded to UTF-8. It is unknow what are actual steps leading to that. BTW, there a few Git clients in use: git in Git Bash, VSCode, Fork.

What bothers me in the .gitattributes is this `-text` attribute.

Is the use of `working-tree-encoding` and `-text` together a valid combination at all?

The documentation at https://git-scm.com/docs/gitattributes does not seem to touch on that.

I'll appreciate any suggestions on those UTF-16LE-BOM files.
Best regards,
-- 
Mateusz Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net
Next: Torsten Bögershausen
Message 1 of 3 in “Handling text files encoded in little-endian UTF-16 with BOM”
  1. Mateusz LoskotJul 5, 2019
  2. Torsten BögershausenJul 5, 2019
  3. Mateusz LoskotJul 5, 2019

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