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Documentation should mention encoding instead of defaultEncoding as options property for fs.createWriteStream #14611
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/cc @nodejs/streams @mcollina
I would say we should update the docs to use
'encoding'instead. @azasypkin would you like to send a PR?@azasypkin would you like to send a PR?
Sure, but will go through
CONTRIBUTING.mdfirst. Should the fix go tomasteronly or PRs for 6/7/8 will be needed too?And I'm going to update TS type definitions too (I see it has been noticed already DefinitelyTyped/DefinitelyTyped#14981).
the fix will go to master, and then we will backport to 8 and 6.
- added 2 commits that reference this issue
on Sep 10, 2017 - added a commit that references this issue
on Jul 27, 2026
Documentation says that
defaultEncodingis the right options property forfs.createWriteStream. But if we look into source code [1]optionsare directly passed toWriteStreamthat expectsoptions.encoding[2]. At the same timeoptionsare passed toWritable->WritableState[3] that expectsoptions.defaultEncodinginstead [4].For example this inconsistency reveals when you pass "wrong" encoding. Both following examples throw
TypeError: Unknown encoding: unknown:and
But the following example doesn't throw anything:
I see there was a similar issue a while ago: nodejs/node-v0.x-archive#7710. So at least it's confusing.
[1] https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/v6.x/lib/fs.js#L2059
[2] https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/v6.x/lib/fs.js#L2100
[3] https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/v6.x/lib/fs.js#L2077
[4] https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/v6.x/lib/_stream_writable.js#L64