Using iconv to change character encodings

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Summary

If you have a large number of files to convert, you'll need something a bit more efficient than the Online Character Set Conversion page. iconv is an excellent solution if you are comfortable at the command line.

The iconv utility is included with most Linux distributions and is available for Windows.

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Detail

The basic command is:
iconv -f old-encoding -t new-encoding file.txt > newfile.txt

You can get a list of supported encodings with (that's a lower-case L, not a one):
iconv -l

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Resources

• The official iconv man page.
• For Linux users who don't have it in their distribution, the iconv source is available from GNU
• A Win32 binary of iconv if you are unlucky enough to be chained to Microsoft. It is included in the libiconv zip file.
• iconv.com has online version. This should give identical results to the Online Character Set Conversion Utility here at FileFormat.Info, but you never know.