What is the difference between #encode and #force_encoding in ruby?

by

Difference is pretty big. force_encoding sets given string encoding, but does not change the string itself, i.e. does not change it representation in memory:

'łał'.bytes #=> [197, 130, 97, 197, 130]
'łał'.force_encoding('ASCII').bytes #=> [197, 130, 97, 197, 130]
'łał'.force_encoding('ASCII')   #=> "\xC5\x82a\xC5\x82"

encode assumes that the current encoding is correct and tries to change the string so it reads same way in second encoding:

'łał'.encode('UTF-16') #=> 'łał'
'łał'.encode('UTF-16').bytes #=> [254, 255, 1, 65, 0, 97, 1, 66]

In short, force_encoding changes the way string is being read from bytes, and encode changes the way string is written without changing the output (if possible)

Leave a Comment