"hidden" characters in .txt files

[Graziella]

Hi,

I have two questions:
1. how does one check to see the encoding of a .txt file when working in a Unix environment ?

2. how does one check to see if there are characters that are not visible through the text editor one is using (pico, vi, emacs) but can create problems with regex when processing the file ?

Thank you,

Grazia

 

[BIS]

one way would be "cat -v file

 

[vgersh99]

od -c file

vlad
+----------------------------+
| #include<disclaimer.h> |
+----------------------------+