Best way to convert text files between character sets?

Question

What is the fastest, easiest tool or method to convert text files between character sets?

Specifically, I need to convert from UTF-8 to ISO-8859-15 and vice versa.

Answer 1

PHP iconv()

iconv("UTF-8", "ISO-8859-15", $input);

Answer 2

Under Linux you can use the very powerful recode command to try and convert between the different charsets as well as any line ending issues. recode -l will show you all of the formats and encodings that the tool can convert between. It is likely to be a VERY long list.

Answer 3

My favorite tool for this is Jedit (a java based text editor) which has two very convenient features :

• One which enables the user to reload a text with a different encoding (and, as such, to control visually the result)
• Another one which enables the user to explicitly choose the encoding (and end of line char) before saving