iconv

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 inputfiles are read and
       converted in turn; if no inputfile is given, the standard input is used.
       The converted text is printed to standard output.

       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 implementation,
       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)



GNU                             January 22, 2006                        ICONV(1)