Converting UTF8 to ANSI with Ruby

ruby utf-8 ansi iconv
Dema picture Dema · Nov 4, 2008 · Viewed 25.4k times · Source

I have a Ruby script that generates a UTF8 CSV file remotely in a Linux machine and then transfers the file to a Windows machine thru SFTP.

I then need to open this file with Excel, but Excel doesn't get UTF8, so I always need to open the file in a text editor that has the capability to convert UTF8 to ANSI.

I would love to do this programmatically using Ruby and avoid the manual conversion step. What's the easiest way to do it?

PS: I tried using iconv but had no success.

Answer

AShelly picture AShelly · Nov 4, 2008 
ascii_str = yourUTF8text.unpack("U*").map{|c|c.chr}.join

assuming that your text really does fit in the ascii character set.

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