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Backwards question mark appearing in FTP'd file

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# 1  
Old 03-17-2010
Backwards question mark appearing in FTP'd file
Hi all,

I'm trying to FTP what looks like a simple .txt file from my Windows XP desktop to my UNIX server. I've tried using several programs to do this including UltraEdit and FTP Commander. I have tried sending it ascii, binary and even let the program decide. But every time it arrives in UNIX it includes a character that looks like a backwards question mark at the very beginning and it screws up my scripts meant to read the file.

Any suggestions on how to get rid of this darn thing? Smilie
# 2  
Old 03-17-2010
what's the byte count before and after? what's the first char look like under UltraEdit's hex mode? [ctrl-h]
# 3  
Old 03-17-2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by curleb
what's the byte count before and after? what's the first char look like under UltraEdit's hex mode? [ctrl-h]
The byte count is the same on both the desktop and UNIX. The first character under UltraEdit's hex mode is FF followed by FE
# 4  
Old 03-17-2010
Appears to be a UTF-16 byte order mark:

Byte order mark - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

From another forum, one Unix utility to convert to UTF-8 (assuming your program cannot process UTF-16 encoded text) might be recode:

recode - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)

There is also this utility which may be useful:

https://www.unix.com/unix-dummies-que...f-16-file.html

iconv -f UTF-16 -t UTF-8 myfile > temporary_file
grep '1 CHAR UNICODE' temporary_file
# 5  
Old 03-17-2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by turk451
Appears to be a UTF-16 byte order mark:

Byte order mark - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

From another forum, one Unix utility to convert to UTF-8 (assuming your program cannot process UTF-16 encoded text) might be recode:

recode - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)

There is also this utility which may be useful:

https://www.unix.com/unix-dummies-que...f-16-file.html

iconv -f UTF-16 -t UTF-8 myfile > temporary_file
grep '1 CHAR UNICODE' temporary_file
I tried the iconv command and got the following error: iconv: can not initialize the conversion
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