Convert text from one character encoding to another.
The iconv command is used to convert the encoding of files. For example, it can convert UTF-8 encoded files to GB18030 and vice versa. Similar tools include JDK's native2ascii. The iconv library in Linux includes C functions like iconv_open, iconv_close, and iconv, which are useful for character conversion in C/C++ programs, especially when web scraping. The iconv command is helpful for debugging such programs.
iconv -f encoding [-t encoding] [inputfile]...
-f encoding : Specify the source encoding.
-t encoding : Specify the target encoding.
-l : List all known coded character sets.
-o file : Specify the output file.
-c : Silently discard characters that cannot be converted instead of terminating.
-s : Suppress warning messages.
--verbose : Display progress information.
The valid encodings for -f and -t can be listed using the -l option.
List all supported character encodings:
iconv -l
Convert file1 from EUC-JP-MS to UTF-8 and save the output to file2:
iconv file1 -f EUC-JP-MS -t UTF-8 -o file2
If -o is not specified, the output is sent to standard output (stdout).