$CharacterEncoding$SystemCharacterEncoding.See the character encoding current is in effect and used in input and output functions functions like OpenRead[]:
$CharacterEncoding
By setting its value to one of the values in $CharacterEncodings, operators are formatted differently. For example,
$CharacterEncoding = "ASCII"; a -> b
$CharacterEncoding = "UTF-8"; a -> b
Setting its value to None restore the value to $SystemCharacterEncoding:
$CharacterEncoding = None;
$SystemCharacterEncoding == $CharacterEncoding
See also $SystemCharacterEncoding.