# Encoding problem when i use unpack

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/encoding-problem-when-i-use-unpack/164088>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [March 27, 2009, 6:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/encoding-problem-when-i-use-unpack/164088 "2009-03-27T18:45:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![oxman](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/o/8c91f0/32.png) [@oxman](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/oxman)\
**Post date:** [March 27, 2009, 6:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/encoding-problem-when-i-use-unpack/164088/1 "2009-03-27T18:45:15Z")

</div>

Hi,

I’ve a very strange problem when i use both unpack and encode, lets me  
show you :  
irb(main):034:0\> “=E9”.unpack(“M\*”)[0]  
=\> “\xE9”  
irb(main):035:0\> “=E9”.unpack(“M\*”)[0].encode “UTF-8”, “ISO-8859-1”  
=\> “\xE9”  
irb(main):036:0\> “\xE9”.encode “UTF-8”, “ISO-8859-1”  
=\> “é”  
irb(main):037:0\> “\xE9”.encoding.name  
=\> “ASCII-8BIT”  
irb(main):038:0\> “=E9”.unpack(“M\*”)[0].encoding.name  
=\> “US-ASCII”  
irb(main):039:0\>  
“=E9”.unpack(“M\*”)[0].force\_encoding(“ASCII-8BIT”).encoding.name  
=\> “ASCII-8BIT”  
irb(main):040:0\>  
“=E9”.unpack(“M\*”)[0].force\_encoding(“ASCII-8BIT”).encode “UTF-8”,  
“ISO-8859-1”  
=\> “\xE9”

Could you explain me how can i unpack then encode to UTF-8 ?