I think that I hit that with Java: % java -Dfile.encoding=UTF-32 Test | hexdump -C 00000000 00 00 00 48 00 00 00 65 00 00 00 6c 00 00 00 6c |...H...

I think that I hit that with Java: % java -Dfile.encoding=UTF-32 Test | hexdump -C 00000000 00 00 00 48 00 00 00 65 00 00 00 6c 00 00 00 6c |...H...e...l...l| 00000010 00 00 00 6f 00 00 00 2c 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 77 |...o...,... ...w| 00000020 00 00 00 6f 00 00 00 72 00 00 00 6c 00 00 00 64 |...o...r...l...d| 00000030 00 00 00 0a |....| 00000034 From quick googling it seems that glibc does not support it, so it should not happen.