VT−IS−UTF8

vt-is-UTF8 − check whether current VT is in UTF8- or byte-mode.

vt-is-UTF8 [-h|--help] [-V|--version] [-q|--quiet]

vt-is-UTF8 checks whether the current VT is in UTF8 mode, by writing (and erasing afterwards) a 3-byte-long UTF8 sequence, and looking how much chars where displayed by the console driver.

A message telling in which mode the console is is then written to stdout (except if the --quiet option was given).

If the --quiet option is not given, the value returned is 1 if an error occurs, else 0.

-h --help

display version number, a short help message and exit.

-V --version

display version number and exit.

-q --quiet

do not print on stdout in with mode we are, but return the state as exit-status 1 if in UTF8-mode, 0 if in byte-mode. In case of error, 0 is returned and a message is displayed on stderr.

The check should be done by directly asking the kernel, which is not possible as of kernels 2.0.x.

As of kernel 2.0.35, the byte-mode is sometimes erroneously detected as UTF8-mode, after switching from a 512-chars font to a 256-chars font. This is probably a console-driver bug.

unicode_start(1), unicode_stop(1).