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I have a text file with a strange character encoding that I'd like to convert to standard UTF-8. I have managed to get part of the way:

$ file myfile.txt
myfile.txt:        Non-ISO extended-ASCII text, with LF, NEL line endings
$ iconv -f ascii -t utf-8 myfile.txt > myfile.txt.utf8
$ file myfile.txt.utf8
myfile.txt.utf8:   UTF-8 Unicode text, with LF, NEL line endings

## edit myfile.txt.utf8 using nano, to fix failed character conversions (mostly åäö)

$ file myfile.txt.utf8
myfile.txt.utf8:   UTF-8 Unicode text, with LF, NEL line endings

However, I can't figure out how to convert the line endings. How do I do to replace LF+NEL with CR+LF (or whatever is the standard)? When I'm done, I'd like to see the following:

$ file myfile.txt
myfile.txt:        UTF-8 Unicode text
Tomas Aschan
  • 2,922
  • Can you try this iconv -f cp850 -t utf-8 and check the file type – devav2 Aug 29 '12 at 10:10
  • @devav2: Why don't you post that as an answer, so I can accept it? =) I still have to manually fix failed conversions (again...), but I get a file with the right encoding afterwards. – Tomas Aschan Aug 29 '12 at 10:58

1 Answers1

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Try iconv -f cp850 -t utf-8. Might help you

devav2
  • 36,312
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    That did the trick! It still didn't convert all the characters correctly (but given the nonstandard encoding I started with, I doubt anything would...) so I had to manually correct that afterwards, but all the line endings are correct now. Thanks! – Tomas Aschan Aug 29 '12 at 12:56