Notepad++. The characters display as –

Notepad++, like all other programs, can only guess the encoding of plain text files. Some other file formats, like HTML, may contain more information about the encoding used. Other file formats are always encoded as UTF-8, like Java sources (IIRC).

So, Notepad++ may just guess wrong. Check in the status bar which encoding Notepad++ guessed (probably ANSI). Use the Encoding menu to switch (not convert!) the encoding.

A trick that works quite often is to write a Byte Order Mark ("\x{FEFF}") as first character to any file that is encoded in some Unicode encoding, including UTF-8. It is not strictly required for UTF-8, but helps most programs to guess the encoding right, including Notepad++.

In most cases, the BOM does not hurt. An exception are any kind of unix scripts that must start with "#!" and not with a BOM. A BOM makes the script unrecognisabe to the kernel, leading to bizarre error messages.

Alexander