Converting Unicode string to ASCII

Question

I have strings containing characters which are not found in ASCII; such as á, é, í, ó, ú; and I need a function to convert them into something acceptable such as a, e, i, o,

Answer 1

Taking this answer from a C#/.Net question it seems to work in PowerShell ported roughly like this:

function Remove-Diacritics
{
    Param([string]$Text)


    $chars = $Text.Normalize([System.Text.NormalizationForm]::FormD).GetEnumerator().Where{ 

        [System.Char]::GetUnicodeCategory($_) -ne [System.Globalization.UnicodeCategory]::NonSpacingMark

    }


    (-join $chars).Normalize([System.Text.NormalizationForm]::FormC)

}

e.g.

PS C:\> Remove-Diacritics 'abcdeéfg'
abcdeefg