UTF-8 and !# shell scripts

Question

Is there a way to configure bash on Linux (red hat and ubuntu) to allow shell scripts to be encoded in UTF-8?

I can't find a simple way to change just one little thing and have the whole system just use UTF-8 files without having to worry about encoding.

Solution 1

I'm fairly sure bash pays attention to your locale setting, so if it's UTF-8, you should be good to go.

Solution 2

As long as you don't use the UTF-8 BOM, you should be ok.

Solution 3

You shouldn't have to do anything, it's always worked automatically for me.

Comments

[RichVel]

Bizarre that UTF-8 permits a BOM (byte order mark) at start of file, but it's true: unicode.org/faq/utf_bom.html#bom5 - as you imply, any use of this would confuse many applications such as shells.