# Converting multi-byte strings on Windows?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/converting-multi-byte-strings-on-windows/157942>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [January 16, 2009, 7:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/converting-multi-byte-strings-on-windows/157942 "2009-01-16T19:45:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![softf5ajivanet](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@softf5ajivanet](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/softf5ajivanet)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2009, 7:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/converting-multi-byte-strings-on-windows/157942/1 "2009-01-16T19:45:36Z")

</div>

basically i’m reading in a csv file in Windows and it contains a lot of  
multi-byte data (squigles, male-female signs etc.), now it’s going to be  
passed to mysql to insert into the database but because of these weird  
characters it screws up the “fdsfdsf” in the queries and breaks the  
operation.

Any ideas how to get this data into something like ascii or proper  
unicode.

i’ve tried these…

data.gsub(/[‘]/, ‘\\\‘’)  
Iconv.iconv(“UTF-8”, “UTF-8”, data)  
HTMLEntities.encode\_entities(data)

but no dice, i’m probably doing things wrong but would love to know a  
proper way around this ?

stuck and in need of advice?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![softf5ajivanet](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@softf5ajivanet](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/softf5ajivanet)\
**Post date:** [January 19, 2009, 1:30am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/converting-multi-byte-strings-on-windows/157942/2 "2009-01-19T01:30:02Z")

</div>

think i solved it,

```
puts Iconv.iconv('US-ASCII//TRANSLIT', 'utf-8',s).to_s
```