Terminal Any Encoding

日本語版はこちら / Japanese version

Use non-UTF-8 encodings in the VS Code integrated terminal. All 45 non-Unicode encodings VS Code supports are available, from Western, Central European, Cyrillic, Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, Baltic, Thai and Vietnamese to Chinese, Japanese and Korean. They're the non-Unicode encodings in VS Code's "Reopen with Encoding" list (older VS Code versions lack CP 1125 and CP 857, but this extension offers them on any version).

Requirements

VS Code 1.73.0 or later. Supported operating systems (for a remote connection, the remote host's):

Getting Started

Pick an encoding from 🌐 Select Encoding... in the ▼ next to the + button in the terminal panel.

To skip the picker:

• set terminalAnyEncoding.defaultEncoding and pick 🌐 Default Encoding,
• bind a key, or
• make it your default terminal.

Commands

An id is the same as VS Code's files.encoding value (eucjp, shiftjis, etc.) and is shown next to each label in the picker.

Keybindings

Pass an id to terminalAnyEncoding.openTerminal to open it with one key:

[
  {
    "key": "ctrl+alt+e",
    "command": "terminalAnyEncoding.openTerminal",
    "args": "eucjp"
  },
  {
    "key": "ctrl+alt+s",
    "command": "terminalAnyEncoding.openTerminal",
    "args": "shiftjis"
  }
]

Settings

Using this extension as your default terminal

Set terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.linux (.osx on macOS) to 🌐 Default Encoding, and "New Terminal" (Ctrl+Shift+`) opens this extension's terminal.

{
  "terminalAnyEncoding.defaultEncoding": "eucjp",
  "terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.linux": "🌐 Default Encoding"
}

In this case, set the shell to start with shellProfile.*. Without it, $SHELL is used (as a login shell on macOS).

{
  "terminalAnyEncoding.shellProfile.linux": "zsh"
}

Locale Detection

Each terminal gets LANG set to a locale matching its encoding (e.g. ja_JP.EUC-JP). This makes programs that handle text by locale, like date and ls, write in that encoding.

If the matching locale isn't installed on the host, a warning names the locale to generate. "Don't Show Again" or warnAboutLocale turns it off.

On Linux, though, glibc's standard locales include none at all for the following encodings. There's nothing to generate, so no warning is shown for them:

• Shift JIS (unless your distribution adds one like ja_JP.sjis)
• Windows 874
• the DOS code pages (CP 437, 850, 852, 857, 865 and 866)

With these, LANG keeps the value inherited from VS Code, so date and ls may display text wrong.

When your shell's startup file sets LANG

If ~/.bashrc or similar sets LANG or LC_ALL, it overrides the value this extension sets, and date and ls display text wrong. For example, ls shows an EUC-JP file name like $'\244\242'. The override happens after the shell starts, so no warning is shown. Programs that print file contents as-is, like cat, aren't affected.

To avoid this, keep a value that's already set:

export LANG="${LANG:-ja_JP.UTF-8}"

Tasks

A task of type terminalAnyEncoding has its input and output converted (problem matchers read the converted output too). Write it like a shell task, plus an encoding (an id):

{
  "version": "2.0.0",
  "tasks": [
    {
      "label": "build",
      "type": "terminalAnyEncoding",
      "encoding": "eucjp",
      "command": "make",
      "args": ["all"],
      "problemMatcher": "$gcc"
    }
  ]
}

• The command line (including values of variables like ${file}) is interpreted in the task's encoding. So files with non-ASCII UTF-8 names (such as ones created in VS Code) aren't found.
• A command line with a character the encoding can't represent isn't run, and the task fails.

Shell Integration

Works for bash, zsh, fish and pwsh, as in VS Code's own terminals.

Known Limitations and Troubleshooting

Typed input isn't sent

Input with a character the encoding can't represent (e.g. an emoji in an EUC-JP terminal) isn't sent to the terminal. A notification names the character.

Mojibake or �

First check that the terminal's encoding matches the files or programs you're working with. If it does, run locale charmap in the terminal to check the locale's encoding (see Locale Detection).

Tab names don't change on macOS

On macOS, a tab's name stays as it started, e.g. bash (EUC-JP).

Output of other task types and of debug sessions isn't converted

Only this extension's terminals and tasks of type terminalAnyEncoding are converted. A task is converted once it uses the terminalAnyEncoding type. There's no way to convert debug output.

～ and № typed in EUC-JP become different bytes than the editor saves

～ and № typed in an EUC-JP terminal are sent as A1 C1 and AD E2. The terminal shows those bytes as ～ and №, so what you type matches what's displayed. These are also the bytes the wave-dash-unify extension saves. VS Code's editor alone saves 8F A2 B7 and 8F A2 F1 instead, which other tools can't read.

〜 (U+301C) is sent as the wave dash too: A1 C1 in EUC-JP and 81 60 in Shift JIS.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT. See THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md for bundled third-party licenses.