Charset Detection

Purpose

This capability detects the character encoding of byte content to ensure it can be properly decoded into text without encoding errors.

Requirements

Requirement: Auto-Detection

The system SHALL auto-detect character encoding using statistical analysis of the byte content.

Priority: Critical

Scenario: Detect encoding

  • WHEN byte content is analyzed

  • THEN the most likely character encoding is returned

  • AND a confidence score is provided

Requirement: UTF-8 Preference

The system SHALL prefer UTF-8 when ASCII content could be valid as either ASCII or UTF-8, aligning with modern standards.

Priority: Critical

Scenario: Prefer UTF-8

  • WHEN content is valid ASCII

  • THEN the system reports it as UTF-8 (or compatible subset) if not explicitly distinguished

Requirement: Validation

The system SHALL validate detected encodings by attempting decode operations to prevent false positives.

Priority: Critical

Scenario: Validate by decoding

  • WHEN a potential encoding is identified

  • THEN the system attempts to decode the content

  • AND discards the encoding if decoding fails

Requirement: Python Compatibility

The system SHALL return encoding names compatible with Python’s codec system.

Priority: Critical

Scenario: Compatible names

  • WHEN an encoding is returned

  • THEN it can be used directly with bytes.decode()