Specify Charset for Unrar Terminal Output

This guide explains how to configure unrar to output text using a specific character set in your terminal. When extracting or listing archives containing non-ASCII filenames, foreign alphabets, or special symbols, configuring the output encoding prevents garbled characters, question marks, and terminal display errors. Below is the precise syntax and usage examples for controlling console output encoding using the native unrar command-line switches.

Syntax Overview

To set a specific character set for terminal output, use the -sc switch appended with the character set identifier and the display target specifier (d):

unrar <command> -sc<charset>d <archive.rar>

Parameter Breakdown

The -sc switch accepts two components to control console display:

  1. Charset Identifiers:

    • u: Unicode (UTF-8)
    • a: ANSI (standard Windows code page or local 8-bit encoding)
    • o: OEM (DOS/legacy console encoding)

  2. Target Specifier:

    • d: Display (directs the encoding choice specifically to terminal and console output)

Practical Examples

1. Set Terminal Output to UTF-8

To view archive contents in standard UTF-8 encoding (most modern Linux and macOS terminals):

unrar l -scud archive.rar

2. Set Terminal Output to OEM

If you are running unrar on older Windows Command Prompt environments that rely on OEM codepages:

unrar v -scod archive.rar

3. Set Terminal Output to ANSI

To force output matching the ANSI standard:

unrar l -scad archive.rar

Combining Targets

The -sc switch allows combining targets if you also want to apply the same character set to comments (c) or list files (l) simultaneously:

  • UTF-8 for both console display and archive comments: 
    unrar v -scucd archive.rar
  • UTF-8 across display, comments, and list files: 
    unrar x -scu archive.rar
    (Omitting the target letter applies the chosen charset globally to all operations).