Hi perl-diddler,

I am not sure if there is a reliable way to check for the encoding of a data stream. I found an article on the subject along with some modules on CPAN. See below. Maybe one of the modules will work for you.

What encoding am I (probably) using?

http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=456690

FILE::BOM

http://search.cpan.org/~mattlaw/File-BOM-0.14/lib/File/BOM.pm

Encode::Detect

http://search.cpan.org/~jgmyers/Encode-Detect-0.01/Detect.pm

Encode::Guess

http://search.cpan.org/~dankogai/Encode-2.56/lib/Encode/Guess.pm

I hope this helps.