iconv

In Unix-like operating systems, iconv is a command-line program^[1] and a standardized application programming interface (API)^[2] used to convert between different character encodings. "It can convert from any of these encodings to any other, through Unicode conversion."^[3]

History

Initially appearing on the HP-UX operating system,^[4]iconv() as well as the utility was standardized within XPG4 and is part of the Single UNIX Specification (SUS).

Implementations

All recent Linux distributions contain a free implementation of iconv utility and iconv() function as part of the GNU C Library which is the C library for current Linux systems. The library's iconv() function^[5] as well as the utility^[6] is licensed as LGPL, so it is linkable with closed source applications. To use the library, the GNU glibc locales need to be installed, which are provided as a separate package (usually named glibc-locale) normally installed by default.

GNU also provides a separate iconv implementation in its "libiconv" package. Unlike the glibc implementation, the utility in "libiconv" is licensed under GPL, so derivatives must be open in GPL too.^[3] This separate implementation can be seen in non-glibc platforms that still need iconv functionalities like Cygwin^[7] and GnuWin32.^[8]

The uconv utility from International Components for Unicode provides an iconv-compatible command-line syntax for transcoding.

Ports

Under Microsoft Windows, the iconv library and the utility is provided by GNU's libiconv found in Cygwin^[7] and GnuWin32^[8] environments; there is also a "purely Win32" implementation called "win-iconv" that uses Windows' built-in routines for conversion.^[9]

The iconv function is also available for many programming languages.

Usage

stdin can be converted from ISO-8859-1 to current locale and output to stdout using:^[10]

iconv -f iso-8859-1

An input file infile can be converted from ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8 and output to output file outfile using:

iconv -f iso-8859-1 -t utf-8 <infile >outfile

References

↑ iconv (utility) OpenGroup Standards page
↑ iconv() OpenGroup Standards page
1 2 gnu.org: libiconv
↑ iconv(3C):Author
↑ "glibc: iconv/iconv.c". Retrieved 30 November 2016.
↑ "glibc: iconv/iconv_prog.c". Retrieved 30 November 2016.
1 2 "Cygwin Package Search: libiconv". Archived from the original on 30 November 2016. Retrieved 30 November 2016.
1 2 GnuWin32: libiconv
↑ "win32-iconv". GitHub. Retrieved 30 November 2016.
↑ IBM knowledge base: iconv examples

External links

Unix command-line interface programs and shell builtins

File system	cat chmod chown chgrp cksum cmp cp dd du df file fsck fuser ln ls mkdir mount mv pax pwd rm rmdir split tee touch type umask

Processes	at bg chroot cron fg kill killall nice pgrep pkill ps pstree time top

User environment	clear env exit finger history logname mesg passwd su sudo uptime talk tput uname w wall who whoami write

Text processing	awk banner basename comm csplit cut diff dirname ed ex fmt fold head iconv join less more nl paste printf sed sort spell strings tail tr uniq vi wc xargs yes

Shell builtins	alias cd echo test unset wait

Networking	dig host ifconfig inetd netcat netstat nslookup ping rdate rlogin route ssh traceroute

Searching	find grep locate whatis whereis

Documentation	apropos help man

Miscellaneous	bc dc cal expr lp od sleep true and false

List of Unix commands

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/30/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.