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P4 CLI Documentation | 2025.2

# Assign file types for Unicode files

The P4 Server can be run in Unicode mode to activate support for filenames and P4 Server metadata that contain Unicode characters, or in non-Unicode mode, where filenames and metadata must be ASCII, but textual files containing Unicode content are still supported.

If you need to manage textual files that contain Unicode characters, but do not need Unicode characters in P4 Server metadata, you do not need to run P4 Server in Unicode mode. Assign the P4 Server `utf16` file type to textual files that contain Unicode characters.

Your system administrator will be able to tell you which mode the service is using.

In either mode, P4 Server supports a set of file types that enable it to determine how a file is stored and whether the file can be diffed. The following sections describe the considerations for managing textual files in Unicode environments:

To assign file type when adding a file to the depot, specify the `-t` option. For example:

    p4 add -t utf16 newfile.txt

To change the file type of files in the depot, open the file for edit, specifying the `-t` option. For example:

    p4 edit -t utf16 myfile.txt

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