Peep is a file-viewing and text-encoding utility which is useful when programming, when experiencing text encoding problems, or when you need to extract information from a file that you can't open otherwise. Its data-extraction functionality allows you to view files in a 'hexeditor' style; it's not intended to be an editor, but rather to inspect, access, or sort out encoding problems. It lets you:

• View any file in detail, view / save in any text encoding
• Displays each byte as data (decimal or hex notation) or as text
• Can take text directly from the clipboard
• Try different text encodings to find the correct one or the best fit
• Attempts to filter the text from a proprietary format
• Saves a text file using the same or another encoding

There are many different text encoding systems (ways of representing characters within a file) and a file doesn't necessarily carry information about the encoding that was used when it was saved. This can lead to frustrating problems when the file is opened.