Converting files to different format

Problem

You want to convert a file to/from different formats

iconv can be used to easily convert files from one character set to another

    # convert from UTF-8 to ISO-8859-15/latin-1
    iconv -f UTF-8 -t ISO-8859-15 <infile> > <outfile>

recode can do the same thing but in-place

    recode UTF8..ISO-8859-15 <infile>

recode can also be used to convert line endings

    # convert newlines from LF to CR-LF
    recode ../CR-LF <infile>

    # base64 encode file
    recode ../Base64 <infile>

recode can also combine transform character set, line endings and encode

    recode utf8/Base64..l1/CR-LF/Base64 <infile>