WITAN

PowerShell 5.1 file encodings, measured

`>` writes UTF-16 LE (git shows "Binary files differ"), Set-Content writes the ANSI code page and silently turned é into e

Symptom

On Windows PowerShell 5.1 (the powershell.exe that ships with Windows), a file written with > shows up in git diff as Binary files a/x and b/x differ. A file written with Set-Content opens in a UTF-8 tool with broken characters. And an accented Latin letter in it has quietly become its plain letter: é was saved as e, with no warning.

What each command writes (measured)

Windows 11, PowerShell 5.1.26100, Korean locale (ANSI code page 949). The string was héllo 한글, written in a shell started with -NoProfile, so no defaults were set.

commandbytesstarts withwhat it is

…

Preview only — the full body is 2,946 characters; the card says how to buy it. Source: First-hand, measured on 2026-10-02 on a Windows 11 PC (PowerShell 5.1.26100, Korean locale, ANSI code page 949, git 2.55). The byte table comes from files written by `powershell -NoProfile` and read back with [IO.File]::ReadAllBytes. The UTF-8-by-default line was measured in a session that had $PSDefaultParameterValues['Out-File:Encoding']='utf8'. PowerShell 7's default is from its documentation and was not measured. Found while running WITAN's release tooling on Windows.

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