path: root/intl/icu/source/extra/uconv/uconv.1.in

.\" Hey, Emacs! This is -*-nroff-*- you know...
.\"
.\" uconv.1: manual page for the uconv utility.
.\"
.\" Copyright (C) 2016 and later: Unicode, Inc. and others.
.\" License & terms of use: http://www.unicode.org/copyright.html
.\" Copyright (C) 2000-2013 IBM, Inc. and others.
.\"
.\" Manual page by Yves Arrouye <yves@realnames.com>.
.\"
.TH UCONV 1 "2005-jul-1" "ICU MANPAGE" "ICU @VERSION@ Manual"
.SH NAME
.B uconv
\- convert data from one encoding to another
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B uconv
[
.BR "\-h\fP, \fB\-?\fP, \fB\-\-help"
]
[
.BI "\-V\fP, \fB\-\-version"
]
[
.BI "\-s\fP, \fB\-\-silent"
]
[
.BI "\-v\fP, \fB\-\-verbose"
]
[
.BI "\-l\fP, \fB\-\-list"
|
.BI "\-l\fP, \fB\-\-list\-code" " code"
|
.BI "\-\-default-code"
|
.BI "\-L\fP, \fB\-\-list\-transliterators"
]
[
.BI "\-\-canon"
]
[
.BI "\-x" " transliteration
]
[
.BI "\-\-to\-callback" " callback"
|
.B "\-c"
]
[
.BI "\-\-from\-callback" " callback"
|
.B "\-i"
]
[
.BI "\-\-callback" " callback"
]
[
.BI "\-\-fallback"
|
.BI "\-\-no\-fallback"
]
[
.BI "\-b\fP, \fB\-\-block\-size" " size"
]
[
.BI "\-f\fP, \fB\-\-from\-code" " encoding"
]
[
.BI "\-t\fP, \fB\-\-to\-code" " encoding"
]
[
.BI "\-\-add\-signature"
]
[
.BI "\-\-remove\-signature"
]
[
.BI "\-o\fP, \fB\-\-output" " file"
]
[
.IR file .\|.\|.
]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B uconv
converts, or transcodes, each given
.I file
(or its standard input if no
.I file
is specified) from one
.I encoding
to another. 
The transcoding is done using Unicode as a pivot encoding
(i.e. the data are first transcoded from their original encoding to
Unicode, and then from Unicode to the destination encoding).
.PP
If an
.I encoding
is not specified or is
.BR - ,
the default encoding is used. Thus, calling
.B uconv
with no
.I encoding
provides an easy way to validate and sanitize data files for
further consumption by tools requiring data in the default encoding.
.PP
When calling
.BR uconv ,
it is possible to specify callbacks that are used to handle invalid
characters in the input, or characters that cannot be transcoded to
the destination encoding. Some encodings, for example, offer a default
substitution character that can be used to represent the occurence of
such characters in the input. Other callbacks offer a useful visual
representation of the invalid data.
.PP
.B uconv
can also run the specified
.IR transliteration
on the transcoded data,
in which case transliteration will happen as an intermediate step,
after the data have been transcoded to Unicode.
The
.I transliteration
can be either a list of semicolon-separated transliterator names,
or an arbitrarily complex set of rules in the ICU transliteration
rules format.
.PP
For transcoding purposes,
.B uconv
options are compatible with those of
.BR iconv (1),
making it easy to replace it in scripts. It is not necessarily the case,
however, that the encoding names used by
.B uconv
and ICU are the same as the ones used by
.BR iconv (1).
Also, options that provide informational data, such as the
.B \-l\fP, \fB\-\-list
one offered by some 
.BR iconv (1)
variants such as GNU's, produce data in a slightly different and
easier to parse format.
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
.BR "\-h\fP, \fB\-?\fP, \fB\-\-help"
Print help about usage and exit.
.TP
.BR "\-V\fP, \fB\-\-version"
Print the version of
.B uconv
and exit.
.TP
.BI "\-s\fP, \fB\-\-silent"
Suppress messages during execution.
.TP
.BI "\-v\fP, \fB\-\-verbose"
Display extra informative messages during execution.
.TP
.BI "\-l\fP, \fB\-\-list"
List all the available encodings and exit.
.TP
.BI "\-l\fP, \fB\-\-list\-code" " code"
List only the
.I code
encoding and exit. If
.I code
is not a proper encoding, exit with an error.
.TP
.BI "\-\-default-code"
List only the name of the default encoding and exit.
.TP
.BI "\-L\fP, \fB\-\-list\-transliterators"
List all the available transliterators and exit.
.TP
.BI "\--canon"
If used with
.BI "\-l\fP, \fB\-\-list"
or
.BR "\-\-default-code" ,
the list of encodings is produced in a format compatible with
.BR convrtrs.txt (5).
If used with
.BR "\-L\fP, \fB\-\-list\-transliterators" ,
print only one transliterator name per line.
.TP
.BI "\-x" " transliteration"
Run the given
.IR transliteration
on the transcoded Unicode data,
and use the transliterated data as input for the transcoding to
the the destination encoding.
.TP
.BI "\-\-to\-callback" " callback"
Use
.I callback
to handle characters that cannot be transcoded to the destination
encoding. See section
.B CALLBACKS
for details on valid callbacks.
.TP
.B "\-c"
Omit invalid characters from the output.
Same as
.BR "\-\-to\-callback skip" .
.TP
.BI "\-\-from\-callback" " callback"
Use
.I callback
to handle characters that cannot be transcoded from the original
encoding. See section
.B CALLBACKS
for details on valid callbacks.
.TP
.B "\-i"
Ignore invalid sequences in the input.
Same as
.BR "\-\-from\-callback skip" .
.TP
.BI "\-\-callback" " callback"
Use
.I callback
to handle both characters that cannot be transcoded from the original
encoding and characters that cannot be transcoded to the destination
encoding. See section
.B CALLBACKS
for details on valid callbacks.
.TP
.BI "\-\-fallback"
Use the fallback mapping when transcoding from
Unicode to the destination encoding.
.TP
.BI "\-\-no\-fallback"
Do not use the fallback mapping when transcoding from Unicode to the
destination encoding.
This is the default.
.TP
.BI "\-b\fP, \fB\-\-block\-size" " size"
Read input in blocks of
.I size
bytes at a time. The default block size is
4096.
.TP
.BI "\-f\fP, \fB\-\-from\-code" " encoding"
Set the original encoding of the data to 
.IR encoding .
.TP
.BI "\-t\fP, \fB\-\-to\-code" " encoding"
Transcode the data to
.IR encoding .
.TP
.BI "\-\-add\-signature"
Add a U+FEFF Unicode signature character (BOM) if the output charset
supports it and does not add one anyway.
.TP
.BI "\-\-remove\-signature"
Remove a U+FEFF Unicode signature character (BOM).
.TP
.BI "\-o\fP, \fB\-\-output" " file"
Write the transcoded data to
.IR file .
.SH CALLBACKS
.B uconv
supports specifying callbacks to handle invalid data. Callbacks can be
set for both directions of transcoding: from the original encoding to
Unicode, with the
.BR "\-\-from\-callback"
option, and from Unicode to the destination encoding, with the
.BR "\-\-to\-callback"
option.
.PP
The following is a list of valid
.I callback
names, along with a description of their behavior. The list of
callbacks actually supported by
.B uconv
is displayed when it is called with
.BR "\-h\fP, \fB\-\-help" .
.PP
.TP \w'\fBescape-unicode'u+3n
.B substitute
Write the the encoding's substitute sequence, or the Unicode
replacement character
.B U+FFFD
when transcoding to Unicode.
.TP
.B skip
Ignore the invalid data.
.TP
.B stop
Stop with an error when encountering invalid data.
This is the default callback.
.TP
.B escape
Same as
.BR escape-icu .
.TP
.B escape-icu
Replace the missing characters with a string of the format
.BR %U\fIhhhh\fP
for plane 0 characters, and
.BR %U\fIhhhh\fP%U\fIhhhh\fP
for planes 1 and above characters,
where
.I hhhh
is the hexadecimal value of one of the UTF-16 code units representing the
character. Characters from planes 1 and above are written as a pair of
UTF-16 surrogate code units.
.TP
.B escape-java
Replace the missing characters with a string of the format
.BR \eu\fIhhhh\fP
for plane 0 characters, and
.BR \eu\fIhhhh\fP\eu\fIhhhh\fP
for planes 1 and above characters,
where
.I hhhh
is the hexadecimal value of one of the UTF-16 code units representing the
character. Characters from planes 1 and above are written as a pair of
UTF-16 surrogate code units.
.TP
.B escape-c
Replace the missing characters with a string of the format
.BR \eu\fIhhhh\fP
for plane 0 characters, and
.BR \eU\fIhhhhhhhh\fP
for planes 1 and above characters,
where
.I hhhh
and
.I hhhhhhhh
are the hexadecimal values of the Unicode codepoint.
.TP
.B escape-xml
Same as
.BR escape-xml-hex .
.TP
.B escape-xml-hex
Replace the missing characters with a string of the format
.BR &#x\fIhhhh\fP; ,
where
.I hhhh
is the hexadecimal value of the Unicode codepoint.
.TP
.B escape-xml-dec
Replace the missing characters with a string of the format
.BR &#\fInnnn\fP; ,
where
.I nnnn
is the decimal value of the Unicode codepoint.
.TP
.B escape-unicode
Replace the missing characters with a string of the format
.BR {U+\fIhhhh\fP} ,
where
.I hhhh
is the hexadecimal value of the Unicode codepoint.
That hexadecimal string is of variable length and can use from 4 to
6 digits.
This is the format universally used to denote a Unicode codepoint in
the litterature, delimited by curly braces for easy recognition of those
substitutions in the output.
.SH EXAMPLES
Convert data from a given
.I encoding
to the platform encoding:

.RS 4
.B \fR$ \fPuconv \-f \fIencoding\fP
.RE
.PP
Check if a
.I file
contains valid data for a given
.IR encoding :

.RS 4
.B \fR$ \fPuconv \-f \fIencoding\fP \-c \fIfile\fP >/dev/null
.RE
.PP
Convert a UTF-8
.I file
to a given
.I encoding
and ensure that the resulting text is good for any version of HTML:

.RS 4
.B \fR$ \fPuconv \-f utf-8 \-t \fIencoding\fP \e
.br
.B "    \-\-callback escape-xml-dec \fIfile\fP"
.RE
.PP
Display the names of the Unicode code points in a UTF-file:

.RS 4
.B \fR$ \fPuconv \-f utf-8 \-x any-name \fIfile\fP
.RE
.PP
Print the name of a Unicode code point whose value is known (\fBU+30AB\fP
in this example):

.RS 4
.B \fR$ \fPecho '\eu30ab' | uconv \-x 'hex-any; any-name'; echo
.br
{KATAKANA LETTER KA}{LINE FEED}
.br
$ 
.RE

(The names are delimited by curly braces.
Also, the name of the line terminator is also displayed.)
.PP
Normalize UTF-8 data using Unicode NFKC, remove all control characters,
and map Katakana to Hiragana:

.RS 4
.B \fR$ \fPuconv \-f utf-8 \-t utf-8 \e
.br
.B "      \-x '::nfkc; [:Cc:] >; ::katakana-hiragana;'"
.SH CAVEATS AND BUGS
.B uconv
does report errors as occuring at the first invalid byte
encountered. This may be confusing to users of GNU
.BR iconv (1),
which reports errors as occuring at the first byte of an invalid
sequence. For multi-byte character sets or encodings, this means that
.BR uconv
error positions may be at a later offset in the input stream than
would be the case with GNU
.BR iconv (1).
.PP
The reporting of error positions when a transliterator is used may be
inaccurate or unavailable, in which case
.BR uconv
will report the offset in the output stream at which the error
occured.
.SH AUTHORS
Jonas Utterstroem
.br
Yves Arrouye
.SH VERSION
@VERSION@
.SH COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2000-2005 IBM, Inc. and others.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR iconv (1)