Unicode encoding formats supported by Flash Player

When reading text data in Flash, Flash Player looks at the first two bytes in the file to detect a byte order mark (BOM), a standard formatting convention used to identify the Unicode encoding format. If no BOM is detected, the text encoding is interpreted as UTF-8 (an 8-bit encoding format). It is recommended that you use UTF-8 encoding in your applications.

If Flash Player detects either of the following BOMs, the text encoding format is interpreted as follows:

• If the first byte of the file is OxFE and the second is OxFF, the encoding is interpreted as UTF-16 BE (Big Endian). This is used for Macintosh operating systems.
• If the first byte of the file is OxFF and the second is OxFE, the encoding is interpreted as UTF-16 LE (Little Endian). This is used for Windows operating systems.

Most text editors that can save files in UTF-16BE or LE automatically add the BOMs to the files.

Note: If you set the system.useCodepage property to true, the text is interpreted using the traditional code page of the operating system that is running the player; it is not interpreted as Unicode. See Using external text or XML files that are not Unicode encoded.