'\" t -*- coding: UTF-8 -*- .\" .\" Copyright (C) 2014 Marko Myllynen .\" .\" %%%LICENSE_START(GPLv2+_DOC_FULL) .\" This is free documentation; you can redistribute it and/or .\" modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as .\" published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of .\" the License, or (at your option) any later version. .\" .\" The GNU General Public License's references to "object code" .\" and "executables" are to be interpreted as the output of any .\" document formatting or typesetting system, including .\" intermediate and printed output. .\" .\" This manual is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, .\" but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of .\" MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the .\" GNU General Public License for more details. .\" .\" You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public .\" License along with this manual; if not, see .\" . .\" %%%LICENSE_END .\" .TH ICONV 1 2014-07-08 "GNU" "Linux User Manual" .SH NAME iconv \- convert text from one character encoding to another .SH SYNOPSIS .B iconv .RI [ options ] .RI "[-f " from-encoding "]" .RI "[-t " to-encoding "]" .RI [ inputfile ]... .SH DESCRIPTION The .B 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 (\-), .B iconv reads from standard input. If no output file is given, .B iconv writes to standard output. .PP If no .I from-encoding is given, the default is derived from the current locale's character encoding. If no .I to-encoding is given, the default is derived from the current locale's character encoding. .SH OPTIONS .TP .BI \-f " from-encoding" ", \-\-from-code=" from-encoding Use .I from-encoding for input characters. .TP .BI \-t " to-encoding" ", \-\-to-code=" to-encoding Use .I to-encoding for output characters. If the string .BR //IGNORE is appended to .IR to-encoding , characters that cannot be converted are discarded and an error is printed after conversion. If the string .BR //TRANSLIT is appended to .IR 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 question mark (?) in the output. .TP .BR \-l ", " \-\-list List all known character set encodings. .TP .B "\-c" Silently discard characters that cannot be converted instead of terminating when encountering such characters. .TP .BI \-o " outputfile" ", \-\-output=" outputfile Use .I outputfile for output. .TP .BR \-s ", " \-\-silent This option is ignored; it is provided only for compatibility. .TP .B "\-\-verbose" Print progress information on standard error when processing multiple files. .TP .BR \-? ", " \-\-help Print a usage summary and exit. .TP .B "\-\-usage" Print a short usage summary and exit. .TP .BR \-V ", " \-\-version Print the version number, license, and disclaimer of warranty for .BR iconv . .SH EXIT STATUS Zero on success, non-zero on errors. .SH ENVIRONMENT Internally, the .B iconv program uses the .BR iconv (3) function which in turn uses .I gconv modules (dynamically loaded shared libraries) to convert to and from a character set. Before calling .BR iconv (3), the .B iconv program must first allocate a conversion descriptor using .BR iconv_open (3). The operation of the latter function is influenced by the setting of the .B GCONV_PATH environment variable: .IP * 3 If .B GCONV_PATH is not set, .BR iconv_open (3) loads the system gconv module configuration cache file created by .BR 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. .IP * If .B GCONV_PATH is defined (as a colon-separated list of pathnames), the system gconv module configuration cache is not used. Instead, .BR iconv_open (3) first tries to load the configuration files by searching the directories in .BR 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 .B GCONV_PATH is used. This allows users to use custom modules and even replace system-provided modules by providing such modules in .B GCONV_PATH directories. .SH FILES .TP .I /usr/lib/gconv Usual default gconv module path. .TP .I /usr/lib/gconv/gconv-modules Usual system default gconv module configuration file. .TP .I /usr/lib/gconv/gconv-modules.cache Usual system gconv module configuration cache. .SH CONFORMING TO POSIX.1-2001. .SH EXAMPLE Convert text from the ISO 8859-15 character encoding to UTF-8: .in +4n .nf $ \fBiconv \-f ISO\-8859\-15 -t UTF\-8 < input.txt > output.txt\fP .fi .in .PP The next example converts from UTF-8 to ASCII, transliterating when possible: .in +4n .nf $ \fBecho abc ß α € àḃç | iconv \-f UTF\-8 \-t ASCII//TRANSLIT\fP abc ss ? EUR abc .fi .in .SH "SEE ALSO" .BR locale (1), .BR iconv (3), .BR nl_langinfo (3), .BR charsets (7), .BR iconvconfig (8) .SH COLOPHON This page is part of release 3.74 of the Linux .I man-pages project. A description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of this page, can be found at \%http://www.kernel.org/doc/man\-pages/.