# Do we usually use Iconv to do translate to various encodings

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/do-we-usually-use-iconv-to-do-translate-to-various-encodings/167674>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [May 11, 2009, 11:04am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/do-we-usually-use-iconv-to-do-translate-to-various-encodings/167674 "2009-05-11T11:04:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jianlin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e9bcb4/32.png) [@jianlin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jianlin)\
**Post date:** [May 11, 2009, 11:04am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/do-we-usually-use-iconv-to-do-translate-to-various-encodings/167674/1 "2009-05-11T11:04:13Z")

</div>

I wonder if we usually use Iconv to translate to various encoding?

For example:

Iconv.conv(“UTF-8”, “BIG-5”, content)

or

Iconv.conv(“UTF-8”, “CP950”, content)

or do we usually use other packages? One reason is that BIG-5 can  
cause an exception while CP950 won’t on some content, and both of them  
are supposed to be Tradtional Chinese encoding.

by the way, iconv -l on the shell will give names of all encodings.  
Are they supposed to be usable by the ruby Iconv library?