Units Encoding

Applies to TestComplete 14.40, last modified on April 22, 2021

Script units can be in one of the following three formats: ANSI, UTF-16 and UTF-8.

  • ANSI. The ANSI format uses one byte per character.

  • UTF-16. The UTF-16 format corresponds to Unicode and uses two bytes per character.

  • UTF-8. The UTF-8 format corresponds to multi-byte characters. It uses one or more bytes per character.

TestComplete equally supports all of these encoding formats. The format to choose for your units depends on how you store them. In most cases, you can use the UTF-16 format as it provides support for any language. However, some source control systems do not support Unicode files and if you put UTF-16 files in them, you may have problems with file comparison and merging (see also Integration With Source Control Systems via SCC API Providers (Legacy)).

To resolve the problem, you can select the ANSI or UTF-8 formats for your script units. The ANSI format is suitable for languages where every native character can be encoded with a single byte. You can use this format, for instance, for units containing Spanish, German, French or Russian characters. The UTF-8 format implies multi-byte encoding of native characters. You can use it, for example, for units that include Japanese, Chinese or Korean hieroglyphs.

You can specify the desired format using the Units encoding project property. That is, you set the format for all units in your project, not for a single unit.

The property can store the ANSI, UTF-16, UTF-8 or Auto values. The first three values specify the format in which TestComplete will save the script units. Auto means that TestComplete will not change the unit format. It will save the unit in the same format that the unit had before opening it in TestComplete.

To view or change the property:

  • Right-click the project node in the Project Explorer panel and select Edit | Properties from the context menu.

    TestComplete will display the project editor in the Workspace panel and will activate the Properties page of the editor.

  • On the page, choose the General category and then specify the desired format in the Units encoding box.

  • Save changes by selecting File | Save from the TestComplete main menu.

Note: TestComplete does not immediately re-convert script units after you changed the script format for them. The units are converted the next time you change and save them.

See Also

Unicode Support
Integration With Source Control Systems via SCC API Providers (Legacy)
Code Editor

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