Re: How to get emacs to save files as UTF8

[Harald Hanche-Olsen <hanche@math.ntnu.no>]

+ eric.goforth@gmail.com:

| I've changed the following in my .emacs file:
|
| (custom-set-variables
|   [snip]
|  '(current-language-environment "UTF-8")
|  )
|
| However, I'm opening all of the .asp files in a directory using dired,
| doing a search and replace for 65001, replacing it with 65001.

Which shouldn't do anything:  Emacs by default saves files in the same
encoding that it reads them in.

| The first line of all my .asp files is:
|  <%@ Language=VBScript CodePage=65001 %>
|
| I then save all the files, but when I open one with notepad and do a
| save as, ANSI is the default Encoding, leading me to think that they
| aren't being saved as UTF8.

Uh, I haven't the faintest notion how notepad determines the encoding
of a file.

| I'm using NTEmacs 21.3.1.  Alternatively, if someone knows of a
| quick way to change the Encoding of a bunch of files to UTF8 in
| Windows XP, I'm all ears.

I just whipped up this function for you:

(defun change-encoding-to-utf8 (dir pattern)
  (interactive "DChange files to UTF-8 encoding in directory: 
sMatching file pattern (regexp): ")
  (let ((files (directory-files dir t pattern)))
    (mapc (lambda (file)
	    (find-file file)
	    (set-buffer-file-coding-system 'utf-8)
	    (save-buffer)
	    (kill-buffer (current-buffer)))
	  files)))

Define the function by putting the cursor behind the final parenthesis
and hitting C-x C-e.  Then run

M-x change-encoding-to-utf8 RET (speficy directory) RET .*[.]asd$ RET

(don't type any of the spaces - ".*[.]asd$" is a regexp matching
".asd" at the end of a filename.)

No guarantees, and backup your files before you try this.
But I did try it, and didn't see any troubles.

-- 
* Harald Hanche-Olsen     <URL:http://www.math.ntnu.no/~hanche/>
- It is undesirable to believe a proposition
  when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true.
  -- Bertrand Russell