> > Any guesses as to how I can reliably detect which one of those to use?
> > [or is ruby always wanting A...? if so, is there even a way to use W?]

>
> W functions uses Wide characters, which are based on UTF16, not UTF8
> that Ruby 1.9 can handle natively.
>
> AFAIK: You will need to perform encoding conversions back and forth.

Interesting...so is it the case that on some boxes, only A will work,
and on others only W?
is "abc".encode("UTF-16BE") UTF 16?

Thanks.
-r