Issue #1965 has been updated by Yui NARUSE. Status changed from Open to Closed > Is there some setting to make the IO read all files using :encoding=>'utf-8' by default Encoding.default_external gives the default. Rails may use this and set as UTF-8, so you shouldn't change this. following gives detailed information http://yokolet.blogspot.com/2009/07/design-and-implementation-of-ruby-m17n.html http://blog.grayproductions.net/articles/understanding_m17n http://github.com/candlerb/string19/blob/361c7d9acf1745006fb3f35e94a1ee844d0bff07/string19.rb > should the IO check the file encoding and auto set this before read it? 'EncDet' is the one, but this is not merged yet because of naming problem. These are written in Japanese, but you can see candidates. If you have good name, suggest it. http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/973 http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-dev/33628 Anyway if you know the encoding of a file, to specify explicitly is safest way. ---------------------------------------- http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/1965 ---------------------------------------- http://redmine.ruby-lang.org