Fun with Notepad - Explained

To my new visitors, please try the trick posted earlier here

The explanation for this phenomenon is here:

1. Load Notepad in Windows (in my case XP Pro)

2. Type "bush hid the facts" (all in lowercase, no quotes)

3. Save this file under a name of your choice

4. Re-open the file

You will not see the text that you typed, but instead you will see a bunch of squares.

Most people think it's a Windows Notepad easter egg , but in fact, it isn't. It's just a lousy Notepad bug. Let me explain...

I was myself curious about the cause of this phenomenon, and I found out that this text is not the only one to cause problems. There are other strings that cause Notepad to screw up, including "this app can break", which was another version of the bug that generated a lot of buzz. I've personally tested a series of strings that have the same effect, including "this api can break", "this cat can split", "jane can not dance", "text wit hou tcaps" and even "abcd efg hij klmno" and "xxxx xxx xxx xxxxx". What do these phrases have in common? They are made up by four words made up by four, three, three and five letters, all lowercase.

So, by induction, all "4-3-3-5" strings should work.

Now, let's get to why this thing happens. First of all, it seems that Notepad writes the files just fine, it just can't read them again correctly. As a proof, try opening your saved file, the one that Notepad screws up, with another text editor. It turned out to be OK. So why the Notepad thing then? Well, it's a Windows thing. Notepad uses a Windows function that allows it to figure out whether a text file is Unicode or not. And that function is the one that screws it up. Because the way it checks can easily be described as "guessing". And it guesses that the file is actually Unicode, and not Ascii, as it is supposed to be.