iconv

Additional Notes

iconv is a text-processing command used to convert text between character encodings. It is commonly used in data pipelines to normalize encodings before processing or storage.

The available encoding list depends on the installed iconv library on your system. Use iconv -l to list all supported encodings.

Syntax

iconv [options] [file...]

Parameters

• options: Flags that change how iconv behaves.
• file: Text file to read or process.

Common Options

• -f ENCODING: Source encoding.
• -t ENCODING: Target encoding.
• -o FILE: Write output to a file.

Examples

iconv -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8 old.txt > new.txt
iconv -f UTF-16 -t UTF-8 input.txt -o output.txt

Practical Notes

Use file -i to inspect likely text encoding before converting.