Error: Could not decode "blablobli" with "UTF-8" encoding. Editing not possible.

[koahnig]

when opening a special file in Qt creator I get the message "Error: Could not decode "blablobli" with "UTF-8" encoding. Editing not possible. "
The reason is clear that there is somewhere a character which is not conform with UTF-8. Typically Qt creator is not happy about German Umlaute and I change them. Unfortunately, this time it is another character. The file is a bit big for manual line by line inspection.

Has anyone an idea how to find the character for inspection?

[SGaist]

Hi,

Maybe this can help

[koahnig]

@SGaist

Thanks for suggestion. Unfortunately not. I have tried to use the regexp in Qt creator, but the problem might be the "translation" done through choosing a character set. The find allows searching with regexp and one assemble a simple search with all legal characters (eg. [A-z] and add also punctuation).
The first problem starts with caret which indicates also start of line. However, also obvious wrong characters are not found.

[SGaist]

Did you try with sed ?

[koahnig]

@SGaist
No.
Being a "windows boy" I had to ask google which of the numerous editor solutions this is on linux ;)

I have solved it for my case. It is tedious, but the couple of wrong bytes have been found by trial and error.

[koahnig]

I have added a suggestion to JIRA.

[SGaist]

Good idea, voted !