What's the difference between encode and convert in Notepad++?

Question

The Encoding menu has submenus of Encode in utf-8 and Convert to utf-8 in Notepad++. What's the difference between them?

Answer 1

Short version:

• Encode in keeps the bytes, and modifies the characters.
• Convert to keeps the characters, and modifies the bytes.

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Encode

Encode in ... specifies how bytes are interpreted. Example:

Create new file UTF-8 (no BOM), and insert character ä. File will contain bytes C3 A4. If you select Encode in ANSI, you will see 2 different characters, but underlying bytes are still the same C3 A4.

Note that sometimes byte sequence is invalid in selected encoding, and Notepad++ might have to change it.

You usually use Encode in ... if Notepad++ guesses the file encoding incorrectly.

Convert

Convert to ... tries to keep the text content same, but changes the underlying bytes. Example:

Create new file UTF-8 (no BOM), and insert character ä. Select Convert to ANSI, and character will remain the same ä, but bytes have changed to E4. (If character set was ISO 8859-1.)

You usually use conversion if you want to change the file encoding, for example, to make file compatible with some other program.