Check if file contains multibyte character

Question

I have some subtitle files in UTF-8. Sometimes there are some sporadic multibyte characters in these files which cause problem in some applications.

How do I check in linux (and possibility locate these) if a certain file contains any multibyte character.

Answer 1

You can use file command

chalet16$ echo test > a.txt
chalet16$ echo testก >  b.txt #One of Thai characters
chalet16$ file *.txt
a.txt: ASCII text
b.txt: UTF-8 Unicode text

Answer 2

You can use file or chardet command.