"Sniffing is a terrible way to tell what encoding a file is in." In theory yes, in practice it's an awesome way to find out because the sniffer is more accurat

"Sniffing is a terrible way to tell what encoding a file is in." In theory yes, in practice it's an awesome way to find out because the sniffer is more accurate then the webserver/mail client,human etc. Just about every piece of software I've written that has to deal with multiple encodings uses a sniffer, even if the format specifies it it's a good idea to check with a sniffer.