# Help with Iconv needed

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/help-with-iconv-needed/121628>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [November 29, 2007, 1:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/help-with-iconv-needed/121628 "2007-11-29T13:50:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![strube](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/f475e1/32.png) [@strube](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/strube)\
**Post date:** [November 29, 2007, 1:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/help-with-iconv-needed/121628/1 "2007-11-29T13:50:35Z")

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Can someone tell me what it is that I’m getting wrong here with “iconv”?  
I either get “IllegalSequence” or “äöüß” are not encoded properly when  
using Iconv.conv while it looks good using backticks. ("IllegalSequence  
right now with the second. ÄÖü with the first anytime…)

require ‘rss/1.0’; require ‘rss/2.0’; require ‘open-uri’; require  
“iconv”

#source = “[http://www.sueddeutsche.de/app/service/rss/alles/rss.xml](http://www.sueddeutsche.de/app/service/rss/alles/rss.xml)”  
source = “[Panorama - WELT](http://www.welt.de/vermischtes/?service=Rss)”

content = “”; open(source) { |s| content = s.read }; rss =  
RSS::Parser.parse(content, false)

rss.items.each do |item|  
converted = `'#{item.title}' | iconv -c -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF8`  
puts(Iconv.conv(‘ISO-8859-1’, ‘UTF-8’, item.title)); puts " "  
end

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![strube](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/f475e1/32.png) [@strube](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/strube)\
**Post date:** [November 30, 2007, 1:05am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/help-with-iconv-needed/121628/2 "2007-11-30T01:05:22Z")

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On Nov 29, 6:50 am, Marcus S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> content = “”; open(source) { |s| content = s.read }; rss =  
> RSS::Parser.parse(content, false)
> 
> ## rss.items.each do |item| converted = `'#{item.title}' | iconv -c -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF8` puts(Iconv.conv(‘ISO-8859-1’, ‘UTF-8’, item.title)); puts " " end
> 
> Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Not sure about the error, but I see two issues. First, this is an  
error…

`'#{item.title}' | iconv -c -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF8`

I think you meant to echo the vale to the pipe…

`echo -n '#{item.title}' | iconv -c -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF8`

Second, iso-8859-1 to utf-8 doesn’t appear to be the proper encoding.  
The following string…

Düsseldorf: Prominentengedrängel bei der Bambi-Verleihung

…is encoded as…

“D\303\203\302\274sseldorf: Prominentengedr\303\203\302\244ngel bei  
der Bambi-Verleihung”

…by iconv from the command prompt. But it should be…

“D\303\274sseldorf: Prominentengedr\303\244ngel bei der Bambi-  
Verleihung”

I’m not good with encodings and utf-8, so I can’t tell you the  
problem. I just know “umlaut u” should be 0xc3bc (\303\274), but it’s  
not doing that.

Regards,  
Jordan