Character Encoding Issue Running PowerShell Script

While working with PowerShell, I found that echoing Japanese directly in the console doesn’t cause garbled text, but executing a script that contains Japanese results in garbled output. This article introduces how to deal with character encoding issues when running PowerShell scripts.

# test.ps1
echo あ

PS C:\pg\selenium> echo あ
あ
PS C:\pg\selenium> . test.ps1
縺・
PS C:\pg\selenium> . test.ps1
あ

Solution: Add BOM

nkf --overwrite --oc=UTF-8-BOM test.ps1

utf 8 - UTF8 Script in PowerShell outputs incorrect characters - Stack Overflow

When garbled text occurs as above, adding BOM using nkf will solve it. nkf is a command that converts character encoding. When using nkf, you can add BOM by adding the --oc=UTF-8-BOM option.

Note that the character encoding is different between utf-8 and utf-8-bom. utf-8-bom is utf-8 with BOM added. BOM is used to identify the character encoding. By adding BOM, you can identify the character encoding, which can prevent garbled text.