How do I detect the character encoding of a text

Question

I have a mySQL database that contains accented characters that are being displayed incorrectly by a HTML page.

The problem is that I do not trust the encoding that the database is reporting for the tables, because the whole thing was migrated from another server that was failing.

I have tried to convert the characters to several encodings but my problem is identifying the source character encoding.

I have copied a segment of text from the database.

This is the phrase as it should have been displayed

Fóton é uma ferramenta multi-camadas, multi-ní­vel para criar emissores do tipo CAEmitterLayer e partí­culas...

This is how it is being displayed

FÃŗton Ê uma ferramenta multi-camadas, multi-nível para criar emissores do tipo CAEmitterLayer e partículas...

As I see, this is happening:

• ó is being displayed as Ãŗ
• ú is being displayed as Ãē
• â is being displayed as Ãĸ
• é is being displayed as Ê
• á is being displayed as ÃĄ

Is it possible to identify the encoding by looking at the text?

Answer 1

For simple text you can use tools like:

• enca,
• file.

They guess and can verify the encoding of the text.

For MySQL, you can use just simple SQL requests, like it was presented here: [1], [2].