48 lines
1.5 KiB
Markdown
48 lines
1.5 KiB
Markdown
+++
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date = "2007-08-21"
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title = "Using Iconv to convert UTF-8 to ASCII (on Linux)"
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tags = ["General", "RubyOnRails", "Features", "Ruby"]
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slug = "using-iconv-to-convert-utf-8-to-ascii-on-linux"
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description = "Text encoding is a mess. This will help you convert UTF-8 to ASCII on Linux using iconv."
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+++
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There are situations where you want to remove all the UTF-8 goodness from a string
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(mostly because of legacy systems you're working with). Now, this is rather easy to do.
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I'll give you an example: `çéß`
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Should be converted to `cess`. On my mac, I can simply use the following snippet to convert
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the string:
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``` ruby
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s = "çéß"
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s = Iconv.iconv('ascii//translit', 'utf-8', s).to_s # returns "c'ess"
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s.gsub(/\W/, '') # return "cess"
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```
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Very nice and all, but when I deploy to my Debian 4.0 linux system, the I get an error that
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tells me that invalid characters were present. Why? Because the Mac has unicode goodness built-in.
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Linux does not (in most cases).
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So, how do you go about solving this? Easy! Get unicode support!
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``` shell
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sudo apt-get install unicode
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```
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Now, try again.
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## Bonus
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If you want to convert a sentence (or anything else with spaces in it), you'll notice that spaces are removed by the gsub command. I solve this by splitting up the string first into words. Convert the words and then joining the words together again.
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``` ruby
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words = s.split(" ")
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words = words.collect do |word|
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word = Iconv.iconv('ascii//translit', 'utf-8', word).to_s
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word = word.gsub(/\W/,'')
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end
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words.join(" ")
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```
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Like this? Why not write a mix-in for String?
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