Saving Files in UTF-8 Option

This section provides a tutorial example on how to save text files with Nodepad by selecting the UTF-8 encoding option on the save file dialog box.

After testing the Notepad open function, now I want to test the save function with the UTF-8 encoding.

1. Run Notepad and open hello.utf-8 correctly with the UTF-8 encoding option selected.

2. Click the File > "Save As" menu. The "Save As" dialog box comes up.

3. Enter notepad_utf-8 as the new file name and select UTF-8 option in the Encoding field.

Notepad Save UTF-8 File
Notepad Save UTF-8 File

4. Click the Save button. Notepad saves the text to a new file named as: notepad_utf-8.txt.

5. To see how my text is saved by Notepad, I need to run my HEX dump program on notepad_utf-8.txt:

C:\herong\unicode>java HexWriter notepad_utf-8.txt notepad_utf-8.hex
Number of input bytes: 107

C:\herong\unicode>type notepad_utf-8.hex
EFBBBF48656C6C6F20636F6D70757465
7221202D20456E676C6973680D0AE794
B5E88491E4BDA0E5A5BDEFBC81202D20
53696D706C6966696564204368696E65
73650D0AE99BBBE885A6E4BDA0E5A5BD
EFB997202D20547261646974696F6E61
6C204368696E6573650D0A

5. To compare the UTF-8 text file created by Notepad with my original UTF-8 file, I need to run my HEX dump program on hello.utf-8:

C:\herong\unicode>java HexWriter hello.utf-8 hello_utf-8.hex
Number of input bytes: 104

C:\herong\unicode>type hello_utf-8.hex
48656C6C6F20636F6D70757465722120
2D20456E676C6973680D0AE794B5E884
91E4BDA0E5A5BDEFBC81202D2053696D
706C6966696564204368696E6573650D
0AE99BBBE885A6E4BDA0E5A5BDEFB997
202D20547261646974696F6E616C2043
68696E6573650D0A

The UTF-8 text file saved by Notepad is identical to my original UTF-8 text file except for those 3 bytes in the beginning, "EFBBBF". If we ignore "EFBBBF", we can say that Notepad saves UTF-8 text file correctly.

So what is this "EFBBBF" and why it is added? See the next section for a brief explanation.

Table of Contents

 About This Book

 Character Sets and Encodings

 ASCII Character Set and Encoding

 GB2312 Character Set and Encoding

 GB18030 Character Set and Encoding

 JIS X0208 Character Set and Encodings

 Unicode Character Set

 UTF-8 (Unicode Transformation Format - 8-Bit)

 UTF-16, UTF-16BE and UTF-16LE Encodings

 UTF-32, UTF-32BE and UTF-32LE Encodings

 Python Language and Unicode Characters

 Java Language and Unicode Characters

 Character Encoding in Java

 Character Set Encoding Maps

 Encoding Conversion Programs for Encoded Text Files

Using Notepad as a Unicode Text Editor

 What Is Notepad

 Opening UTF-8 Text Files

 Opening UTF-16BE Text Files

 Opening UTF-16LE Text Files

Saving Files in UTF-8 Option

 Byte Order Mark (BOM) - FEFF - EFBBBF

 Saving Files in "Unicode Big Endian" Option

 Saving Files in "Unicode" Option

 Supported Save and Open File Formats

 Using Microsoft Word as a Unicode Text Editor

 Using Microsoft Excel as a Unicode Text Editor

 Unicode Fonts

 Archived Tutorials

 References

 Full Version in PDF/EPUB