iconv: Converting from Windows ANSI to UTF-8 with BOM

Question

I want to use iconv to convert files on my Mac. The goal is to go from "Windows ANSI" to "whatever Windows Notepad saves, if you tell it to use UFT8".

This is what I want:

$ file names.csv  names.csv: UTF-8 Unicode (with BOM) text, with CRLF line terminators 

This is what I use:

$ iconv -f CP1252 -t UTF-8  names.csv > names.utf8.csv  

This is what I get (not what I want):

$ file names.utf8.csv  names.utf8.csv: UTF-8 Unicode text, with CRLF line terminators 

How do I get the BOM?

Answer 1

You can add it manually by first echoing the bytes into the file:

echo -ne '\xEF\xBB\xBF' > names.utf8.csv 

and then concatenating your required information at the end:

iconv -f CP1252 -t UTF-8  names.csv >> names.utf8.csv 

Note the >> rather than >.

Answer 2

Note that "Windows ANSI" may not be CP1252 - that is configured by users.