using Linux command line to convert file character encoding

Question

How can one change the file encoding from linux (Fedora 20) command line? I have a huge CSV file 7GB and I don't wish to open it.

Kiara Grouwstra · Accepted Answer · 2021-12-13 21:06:30Z

2

open a console window or terminal...
to find out the current encoding

file -bi /path/to/file.csv

the result should look something like

"text/plain; charset=us-ascii"

now for the conversion:

iconv -f inputEncoding -t outputEncoding /path/to/input/file.txt -o path/to/output/file.txt

for example:

iconv -f iso-8859-1 -t utf8 ~/Documents/bigger_not_filtered.csv -o /tmp/utf8_bigger_not_filtered.csv

edited Dec 13, 2021 at 21:06

Kiara Grouwstra

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answered Apr 13, 2015 at 8:04

Ilan.K

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3 Comments

deceze Over a year ago

Note that file can only give you a best guess for the encoding. You should know what your files are encoded in based on some specification or meta data. If you don't and you need charset detection, you need to employ heuristics, or human eyeballing.

Marcel Pfeiffer Over a year ago

You have to set the output file with the -o argument.

Kiara Grouwstra Over a year ago

thanks @MarcelPfeiffer, i updated the answer.

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