README


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libguess - a high-speed character set detection library
-------------------------------------------------------

libguess is free, but copyrighted software.  See COPYING for details.

Using libguess in your programs:
--------------------------------

libguess has two functions:

  - libguess_determine_encoding(const char *inbuf, int length, const char *region);

  This detects a character set.  Returns an appropriate charset name
  that can be passed to iconv_open().  Region is the name of the language
  or region that the data is related to, e.g. 'Baltic' for the Baltic states,
  or 'Japanese' for Japan.

  - libguess_validate_utf8(const char *inbuf, int length);

  This employs libguess's DFA-based character set validation rules to ensure
  that a string is pure UTF-8.  GLib's UTF-8 validation functions are broken,
  for example.

Just include libguess.h and link to libguess to get these functions in your
program.  For your convenience, a pkg-config file is also supplied.

How does libguess work:
-----------------------

libguess employs discrete-finite automata to deduce the character set of the
input buffer.  The advantage of this is that all character sets can be checked
in parallel, and quickly.  Right now, libguess passes a byte to each DFA on the
same pass, meaning that the winning character set can be deduced as efficiently
as possible.

libguess is fully reentrant, using only local stack memory for DFA operations.

I found a bug:
--------------

Please report your bug using GitHub issues.