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

Try VIM

If you have vim you can use this:

Not tested for every encoding.

The cool part about this is that you don't have to know the source encoding

vim +"set nobomb | set fenc=utf8 | x" filename.txt

Be aware that this command modify directly the file

---

Explanation part!

1. + : Used by vim to directly enter command when opening a file. Usualy used to open a file at a specific line: vim +14 file.txt
2. | : Separator of multiple commands (like ; in bash)
3. set nobomb : no utf-8 BOM
4. set fenc=utf8 : Set new encoding to utf-8 doc link
5. x : Save and close file
6. filename.txt : path to the file
7. " : qotes are here because of pipes. (otherwise bash will use them as bash pipe)