Best way to convert text files between character sets?
Best way to convert text files between character sets? What is the fastest, easiest tool or method to convert text files between character sets? Specifically, I need to convert from UTF-8 to ISO-8859-15 and vice versa. Everything goes: one-liners in your favorite scripting language, command-line tools or other utilities for OS, web sites, etc. On Linux/UNIX/OS X/cygwin: Gnu iconv suggested by Troels Arvin is best used as a filter . It seems to be universally available. Example: $ iconv -f UTF-8 -t ISO-8859-15 in.txt > out.txt As pointed out by Ben, there is an online converter using iconv. Gnu recode (manual) suggested by Cheekysoft will convert one or several files in-place . Example: $ recode UTF8..ISO-8859-15 in.txt This one uses shorter aliases: $ recode utf8..l9 in.txt Recode also supports surfaces which can be used to convert between different line ending types and encodings: Convert newlines from LF (Unix) to CR-LF (DOS): $ recode ../CR-LF in.txt Base64 encode file: $ recode...