iconv(1) [x11r4 man page]
ICONV(1) Linux Programmer's Manual ICONV(1) NAME
iconv - character set conversion SYNOPSIS
iconv [OPTION...] [-f encoding] [-t encoding] [inputfile ...] iconv -l DESCRIPTION
The iconv program converts text from one encoding to another encoding. More precisely, it converts from the encoding given for the -f option to the encoding given for the -t option. Either of these encodings defaults to the encoding of the current locale. All the input- files are read and converted in turn; if no inputfile is given, the standard input is used. The converted text is printed to standard out- put. The encodings permitted are system dependent. For the libiconv implementation, they are listed in the iconv_open(3) manual page. Options controlling the input and output format: -f encoding, --from-code=encoding Specifies the encoding of the input. -t encoding, --to-code=encoding Specifies the encoding of the output. Options controlling conversion problems: -c When this option is given, characters that cannot be converted are silently discarded, instead of leading to a conversion error. --unicode-subst=formatstring When this option is given, Unicode characters that cannot be represented in the target encoding are replaced with a placeholder string that is constructed from the given formatstring, applied to the Unicode code point. The formatstring must be a format string in the same format as for the printf command or the printf() function, taking either no argument or exactly one unsigned integer argument. --byte-subst=formatstring When this option is given, bytes in the input that are not valid in the source encoding are replaced with a placeholder string that is constructed from the given formatstring, applied to the byte's value. The formatstring must be a format string in the same format as for the printf command or the printf() function, taking either no argument or exactly one unsigned integer argument. --widechar-subst=formatstring When this option is given, wide characters in the input that are not valid in the source encoding are replaced with a placeholder string that is constructed from the given formatstring, applied to the byte's value. The formatstring must be a format string in the same format as for the printf command or the printf() function, taking either no argument or exactly one unsigned integer argument. Options controlling error output: -s, --silent When this option is given, error messages about invalid or unconvertible characters are omitted, but the actual converted text is unaffected. The iconv -l or iconv --list command lists the names of the supported encodings, in a system dependent format. For the libiconv implementa- tion, the names are printed in upper case, separated by whitespace, and alias names of an encoding are listed on the same line as the encoding itself. EXAMPLES
iconv -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8 converts input from the old West-European encoding ISO-8859-1 to Unicode. iconv -f KOI8-R --byte-subst="<0x%x>" --unicode-subst="<U+%04X>" converts input from the old Russian encoding KOI8-R to the locale encoding, substituting an angle bracket notation with hexadecimal numbers for invalid bytes and for valid but unconvertible characters. iconv --list lists the supported encodings. SEE ALSO
iconv_open(3), locale(7) GNU
January 22, 2006 ICONV(1)
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ICONV(1) Linux User Manual ICONV(1) NAME
iconv - convert text from one character encoding to another SYNOPSIS
iconv [options] [-f from-encoding] [-t to-encoding] [inputfile]... DESCRIPTION
The iconv program reads in text in one encoding and outputs the text in another encoding. If no input files are given, or if it is given as a dash (-), iconv reads from standard input. If no output file is given, iconv writes to standard output. If no from-encoding is given, the default is derived from the current locale's character encoding. If no to-encoding is given, the default is derived from the current locale's character encoding. OPTIONS
-f from-encoding, --from-code=from-encoding Use from-encoding for input characters. -t to-encoding, --to-code=to-encoding Use to-encoding for output characters. If the string //IGNORE is appended to to-encoding, characters that cannot be converted are discarded and an error is printed after conversion. If the string //TRANSLIT is appended to to-encoding, characters being converted are transliterated when needed and possible. This means that when a character cannot be represented in the target character set, it can be approximated through one or several similar looking characters. Characters that are outside of the target character set and cannot be transliterated are replaced with a ques- tion mark (?) in the output. -l, --list List all known character set encodings. -c Silently discard characters that cannot be converted instead of terminating when encountering such characters. -o outputfile, --output=outputfile Use outputfile for output. -s, --silent This option is ignored; it is provided only for compatibility. --verbose Print progress information on standard error when processing multiple files. -?, --help Print a usage summary and exit. --usage Print a short usage summary and exit. -V, --version Print the version number, license, and disclaimer of warranty for iconv. EXIT STATUS
Zero on success, nonzero on errors. ENVIRONMENT
Internally, the iconv program uses the iconv(3) function which in turn uses gconv modules (dynamically loaded shared libraries) to convert to and from a character set. Before calling iconv(3), the iconv program must first allocate a conversion descriptor using iconv_open(3). The operation of the latter function is influenced by the setting of the GCONV_PATH environment variable: * If GCONV_PATH is not set, iconv_open(3) loads the system gconv module configuration cache file created by iconvconfig(8) and then, based on the configuration, loads the gconv modules needed to perform the conversion. If the system gconv module configuration cache file is not available then the system gconv module configuration file is used. * If GCONV_PATH is defined (as a colon-separated list of pathnames), the system gconv module configuration cache is not used. Instead, iconv_open(3) first tries to load the configuration files by searching the directories in GCONV_PATH in order, followed by the system default gconv module configuration file. If a directory does not contain a gconv module configuration file, any gconv modules that it may contain are ignored. If a directory contains a gconv module configuration file and it is determined that a module needed for this conversion is available in the directory, then the needed module is loaded from that directory, the order being such that the first suitable module found in GCONV_PATH is used. This allows users to use custom modules and even replace system-provided modules by pro- viding such modules in GCONV_PATH directories. FILES
/usr/lib/gconv Usual default gconv module path. /usr/lib/gconv/gconv-modules Usual system default gconv module configuration file. /usr/lib/gconv/gconv-modules.cache Usual system gconv module configuration cache. CONFORMING TO
POSIX.1-2001. EXAMPLE
Convert text from the ISO 8859-15 character encoding to UTF-8: $ iconv -f ISO-8859-15 -t UTF-8 < input.txt > output.txt The next example converts from UTF-8 to ASCII, transliterating when possible: $ echo abc B a EUR ac | iconv -f UTF-8 -t ASCII//TRANSLIT abc ss ? EUR abc SEE ALSO
locale(1), iconv(3), nl_langinfo(3), charsets(7), iconvconfig(8) COLOPHON
This page is part of release 4.15 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of this page, can be found at https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/. GNU
2018-02-02 ICONV(1)