The more I use Visual Studio Code, the more I like it and it is definitely one of the slickest pieces of software running on Linux. But I’ve found a few minor problem that are easily fixed so before I forget the fixes, here they are:

UTF-16 Instead of UTF-8

You copy a file in from somewhere but when you try to compile it you get: fatal error: UTF-16 (LE) byte order mark detected in ‘/home/david/Projects/Asteroids/asteroids.c’, but encoding is not supported.

Fixing this is quite easy; you just need to change the file type from UTF-16 to UTF-8. Visual Studio Code shows the file details at the bottom:

Here you can see it’s UTF-16 LE. Click on UTF-16 and you’ll get a popup menu. Click Save with Encoding and you’ll get a list of Encodings. Just pick UTF-8 and the problem is solved.

You want to save or copy the C/C++ JSON files

But you can only do it by copying and pasting when its in the editor. The problem is they are in a hidden folder under the main folder. Visual Studio Code’s C/C++ extension uses these to hold build, debug etc. configuration details. It’s handy saving them out with source files but a bit slow doing it individually via the editor.

Visual Studio Code uses the main folder (I call mine Projects) and the four JSON files are in ~/Projects/.vscode

On Linux any folder that starts with a . is hidden.

If you use File Explorer, you can tell it to show hidden folders and files by clicking the top button (highlighted) then ticking the Show Hidden Files box. The three folders that were hidden including .vscode are now visible and you can browse, view, copy files etc.