Character Encoding

UTF-8 Character Encoding

OSCAL uses UTF-8 character encoding. JSON and YAML files are always UTF-8 character encoded, but XML files must include an explicit UTF-8 encoding. Other encodings are not allowed and could create unpredictable results in OSCAL tools.

To ensure In OSCAL XML content is processed as UTF-8 encoding, explicitly specify it on the first line of any OSCAL XML file a follows:


<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>


Revision #2
Created 2026-03-25 15:50:08 UTC by Erik Cass
Updated 2026-04-06 20:05:27 UTC by Brian Ruf