Specifying the locale

Translating files between different codesets

Use iconv(1) to translate files between different codesets. For example:

iconv -f local8 -t ISO8859-1 < infile > outfile

This converts infile from the local8 codeset to outfile in ISO8859-1 encoding. The character encoding in either the -f (from) codeset or the -t (to) codeset is in single-byte values (such as ISO8859-1 or ASCII).

You might need to translate files between different codesets if:

the files were written under 7-bit software that does not conform to the ISO8859-1 character set.
the files were generated by software using IBM437 characters which you need to use with a program using ISO8859-1 characters.
the files contain one character set and you need to use them with a device (such as a printer) that uses a different character set.

Although iconv is the recommended translation filter, the older trchan(1) utility is still available. trchan is a filter that acts in the same way as mapchan(1M) and uses the same mapping files. For example, to translate a file from ISO8859-1 to US ASCII, where US ASCII is the character set currently in use, enter:

trchan -i /usr/lib/mapchan/ISO8859-1/iso < inputfile > outputfile

This command uses the input section of /usr/lib/mapchan/ISO8859-1/iso to translate inputfile, and writes the result to outputfile.