Delete non-UTF characters from a string in Ruby?

Question

How do I delete non-UTF8 characters from a ruby string? I have a string that has for example \"xC2\" in it. I want to remove that char from the string so that it becomes a valid

Answer 1

Try Iconv

1.9.3p194 :001 > require 'iconv'
# => true 
1.9.3p194 :002 > string = "testing\xC2 a non UTF-8 string"
# => "testing\xC2 a non UTF-8 string" 
1.9.3p194 :003 > ic = Iconv.new('UTF-8//IGNORE', 'UTF-8')
# => # 
1.9.3p194 :004 > ic.iconv string
# => "testing a non UTF-8 string"