enca
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Description:
Charset analyzer and converter
Type: Formula  |  Latest Version: 1.19@0  |  Tracked Since: Dec 17, 2025
Links: Homepage  |  formulae.brew.sh
Category: Developer tools
Tags: encoding charset conversion text-processing unicode
Install: brew install enca
About:
Enca (Extremely Naive Charset Analyser) is a library and tool designed to detect the character encoding of text files in various languages. It can convert detected encodings to a standard format like UTF-8, making it essential for handling legacy text data. Its primary value is in automating the difficult task of identifying non-Unicode character sets.
Key Features:
  • Automatic charset detection for multiple languages
  • Conversion between different character encodings
  • Support for a wide range of legacy encodings
  • Lightweight and scriptable command-line interface
Use Cases:
  • Converting legacy text files to UTF-8 for modern web applications
  • Processing and analyzing text data from international sources
  • Fixing garbled text (mojibake) in documents or databases
Alternatives:
  • iconv – Standard GNU utility for encoding conversion, but requires you to specify the source encoding, unlike Enca which can auto-detect it.
  • uchardet – A similar auto-detection library, originally a C++ port of Mozilla's charset detector. Enca is often noted for its strong support for Central and Eastern European languages.
License: GPL-2.0-only
Bottles available for: arm64_tahoe, arm64_sequoia, arm64_sonoma, arm64_ventura, arm64_monterey, arm64_big_sur, sonoma, ventura, monterey, big_sur, catalina, arm64_linux, x86_64_linux
Version History
Detected Version Rev Change Commit
Oct 15, 2025 5:02pm 0 VERSION_BUMP abe30754
Sep 13, 2025 2:01pm 0 VERSION_BUMP 8bcac30c
Sep 13, 2024 1:55am 0 VERSION_BUMP 80f69a82