# brianmario/charlock_holmes

Character encoding detection, brought to you by ICU

Repository: https://github.com/brianmario/charlock_holmes
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/charlock_holmes
Language: Ruby
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2026-07-01T23:51:32+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 63/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 90, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 5489, "days_push": 63, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1083, forks 152 (observed 2026-08-28T04:03:31.304181+00:00)

## What it is
A Ruby library for character encoding detection built on top of ICU. It detects the encoding of arbitrary text or binary content and can transcode content between encodings.

## Use cases
- detect the encoding of a file or string in ruby
- convert legacy-encoded text to utf-8
- identify binary vs text content
- normalize encoding of user-uploaded files
- set ruby string encodings automatically from detected content

## When to choose
- you need robust encoding detection in a ruby project
- you must transcode content from unknown encodings to utf-8
- you want ICU-backed detection accuracy

## When to avoid
- you are not working in ruby
- you only handle guaranteed-utf-8 content
- you cannot install native extensions or ICU

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: nlp, parser, serialization
- domain: developer-tools, text-editors
- platform: ruby, cross-platform
- tags: character-encoding, icu, encoding-detection, transcoding, ruby-gem, natural-language-processing

## Member repositories
- brianmario/charlock_holmes (main) score 63

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:31.304181+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T06:50:21.290779+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/brianmario/charlock_holmes (fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:31.304181+00:00, sha 4483d0eb9569)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.