How to Handle Character Encodings in Rust

Rust handles character encoding by treating all strings as UTF-8 by default, using the String and &str types which guarantee valid UTF-8 sequences. You can read files with specific encodings or handle invalid UTF-8 using the std::fs module combined with the encoding_rs crate or by reading bytes first and converting with String::from_utf8_lossy.

use std::fs;

fn main() {
    let bytes = fs::read("file.txt").expect("Failed to read file");
    let text = String::from_utf8_lossy(&bytes);
    println!("{text}");
}

Rust assumes all text is UTF-8, a universal standard that supports almost every character in the world. If you encounter data in a different format, you read it as raw bytes first and then convert it to text, replacing any broken characters with a placeholder. Think of it like reading a book where every page is guaranteed to be in English; if you find a page in another language, you translate it before reading.