Linux: Convert File Encoding with iconv

The GNU command line tool iconv does character encoding conversion.

iconv -f from -t to fileName1 > fileName2

Convert fileName1 from from to to and write to fileName2. Example:

iconv -f utf-16 -t utf-8 file1.txt > file2.txt

iconv -l

Show a list of encodings.

Here's the most commonly used encodings:

• ASCII
• UTF8
• UTF-16
• UTF-16BE
• UTF-16LE
• GB18030
• JIS_X0208