debian man page for vt-is-utf8

VT-IS-UTF8(1)							Linux User's Manual						     VT-IS-UTF8(1)

NAME
       vt-is-UTF8 - check whether current VT is in UTF8- or byte-mode.

SYNOPSIS
       vt-is-UTF8 [-h|--help] [-V|--version] [-q|--quiet]

DESCRIPTION
       vt-is-UTF8  checks whether the current VT is in UTF8 mode, by writing (and erasing afterwards) a 3-byte-long UTF8 sequence, and looking how
       much chars where displayed by the console driver.

       A message telling in which mode the console is is then written to stdout (except if the --quiet option was given).

       If the --quiet option is not given, the value returned is 1 if an error occurs, else 0.

OPTIONS
       -h --help
	      display version number, a short help message and exit.

       -V --version
	      display version number and exit.

       -q --quiet
	      do not print on stdout in with mode we are, but return the state as exit-status 1 if in UTF8-mode, 0 if in  byte-mode.  In  case	of
	      error, 0 is returned and a message is displayed on stderr.

BUGS
       The check should be done by directly asking the kernel, which is not possible as of kernels 2.0.x.

       As  of  kernel  2.0.35,	the byte-mode is sometimes erroneously detected as UTF8-mode, after switching from a 512-chars font to a 256-chars
       font.  This is probably a console-driver bug.

SEE ALSO
       unicode_start(1), unicode_stop(1).

Console tools							    10 Aug 1998 						     VT-IS-UTF8(1)