Iconv Explained

iconv
Author:	Hewlett-Packard
Developer:	Various open-source and commercial developers
Repo:	https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/libiconv.git
Operating System:	Unix, Unix-like, Microsoft Windows, IBM i
Platform:	Cross-platform
Genre:	Command
License:	libiconv: LGPL iconv: GPL win-iconv: Public domain^[1]

In Unix and Unix-like operating systems, iconv (an abbreviation of internationalization conversion)^[2] is a command-line program^[3] and a standardized 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 HP-UX operating system,^[6] iconv as well as the utility was standardized within XPG4 and is part of the Single UNIX Specification (SUS).

Implementations

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^[7] on both is licensed as 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 in the GNU variant.^[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 command has also been ported to the IBM i operating system.^[12]

Usage

[[stdin]] can be converted from ISO-8859-1 to current locale and output to [[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 -o

See also

• uconv
• luit
• List of Unix commands
• International Components for Unicode

External links

• iconv OpenGroup Standards page
• GNU libiconv, code
• win_iconv

Notes and References

1. Web site: win-iconv/readme.txt at master · win-iconv/win-iconv · GitHub.
2. Web site: R: Convert Character Vector between Encodings. astrostatistics.psu.edu. 21 April 2018.
3. Web site: iconv. pubs.opengroup.org. 21 April 2018.
4. Web site: iconv. www.opengroup.org. 21 April 2018.
5. Web site: libiconv - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF). www.gnu.org. 21 April 2018.
6. Web site: iconv(3C). docstore.mik.ua. 21 April 2018.
7. Web site: glibc: iconv/iconv.c. 30 November 2016.
8. Web site: glibc: iconv/iconv_prog.c. 30 November 2016.
9. Web site: Cygwin Package Search: libiconv . 30 November 2016 . https://archive.today/20161130001530/https://cygwin.com/cgi-bin2/package-grep.cgi?grep=libiconv . 30 November 2016 . dead . dmy-all .
10. Web site: LibIconv for Windows. gnuwin32.sourceforge.net. 21 April 2018.
11. Web site: win32-iconv. GitHub. 30 November 2016.
12. Web site: IBM System i Version 7.2 Programming Qshell . en . IBM . IBM . 2020-09-05 .
13. Web site: IBM Knowledge Center. www-01.ibm.com. 21 April 2018.