iconv

In

application programming interface (API)^[4] used to convert between different character encodings. "It can convert from any of these encodings to any other, through Unicode conversion."^[5]

History

Initially appearing on the

XPG4 and is part of the Single UNIX Specification

(SUS).

Most Linux distributions provide an implementation, either from the GNU Standard C Library (included since version 2.1, February 1999), or the more traditional GNU libiconv, for systems based on other Standard C Libraries.

The iconv function

LGPL

, so it is linkable with closed source applications.

Unlike the libraries, the iconv utility is licensed under

GPL in both implementations.^[8]

The GNU libiconv implementation is portable, and can be used on various UNIX-like and non-UNIX systems. Version 0.3 dates from December 1999.

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

Most BSD systems use NetBSD's implementation, which first appeared in December 2004.

Support

Currently, over a hundred different character encodings are supported.^[5]

Ports

Under Microsoft Windows, the iconv library and the utility is provided by GNU's libiconv found in Cygwin^[9] and GnuWin32^[10] environments; there is also a "purely Win32" implementation called "win-iconv" that uses Windows' built-in routines for conversion.^[11] The iconv function is also available for many programming languages.

The iconv command has also been ported to the IBM i operating system.^[12]

Usage

stdout using:^[13]

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> -o <outfile>

References

^ "win-iconv/readme.txt at master · win-iconv/win-iconv · GitHub".
^ "R: Convert Character Vector between Encodings". astrostatistics.psu.edu. Retrieved 21 April 2018.
^ "iconv". pubs.opengroup.org. Retrieved 21 April 2018.
^ "iconv". www.opengroup.org. Retrieved 21 April 2018.
^ ^a ^b "libiconv - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)". www.gnu.org. Retrieved 21 April 2018.
^ "iconv(3C)". docstore.mik.ua. Retrieved 21 April 2018.
^ "glibc: iconv/iconv.c". Retrieved 30 November 2016.^{[permanent dead link]}
^ "glibc: iconv/iconv_prog.c". Retrieved 30 November 2016.^{[permanent dead link]}
^ "Cygwin Package Search: libiconv". Archived from the original on 30 November 2016. Retrieved 30 November 2016.
^ "LibIconv for Windows". gnuwin32.sourceforge.net. Retrieved 21 April 2018.
^ "win32-iconv". GitHub. Retrieved 30 November 2016.
^ IBM. "IBM System i Version 7.2 Programming Qshell" (PDF). Retrieved 5 September 2020.
^ "IBM Knowledge Center". www-01.ibm.com. Retrieved 21 April 2018.

External links

This Unix-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

[1] "win-iconv/readme.txt at master · win-iconv/win-iconv · GitHub".

[2] "R: Convert Character Vector between Encodings". astrostatistics.psu.edu. Retrieved 21 April 2018.

[3] "iconv". pubs.opengroup.org. Retrieved 21 April 2018.

[4] "iconv". www.opengroup.org. Retrieved 21 April 2018.

[gnulibiconv-5] "libiconv - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)". www.gnu.org. Retrieved 21 April 2018.

[6] "iconv(3C)". docstore.mik.ua. Retrieved 21 April 2018.

[7] "glibc: iconv/iconv.c". Retrieved 30 November 2016.^{[permanent dead link]}

[8] "glibc: iconv/iconv_prog.c". Retrieved 30 November 2016.^{[permanent dead link]}

[cygwin-libiconv-search-9] "Cygwin Package Search: libiconv". Archived from the original on 30 November 2016. Retrieved 30 November 2016.

[gnuwin32-libiconv-10] "LibIconv for Windows". gnuwin32.sourceforge.net. Retrieved 21 April 2018.

[win-iconv-11] "win32-iconv". GitHub. Retrieved 30 November 2016.

[12] IBM. "IBM System i Version 7.2 Programming Qshell" (PDF). Retrieved 5 September 2020.

[13] "IBM Knowledge Center". www-01.ibm.com. Retrieved 21 April 2018.

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