Converting UNICODE to shiftJIS

Question

I have a Japanese client and have generated a large flat file (1.2 million rows) of data to send to them.

The file is UTF-8 encoded, which supports storing and displaying all the Japanese characters. The client wishes to receive this file in a shiftJIS encoded format that's designed for Japanese characters.

1. From the wikipedia page I can get the conversion logic
2. I see online converters such as motobit that let you convert encodings.

My issue is that my file is quite large and I will have to do this for several hundred more files repetitively. The copy-paste field on the online converter tool won't scale to that size and isn't quick enough.

Does anyone know of a free desktop application or perhaps even a ruby library that I could use to convert encodings? Or any other suggestions?

Thanks!

Answer 1

No need for any tool or utility, just use the gedit to convert your files. Follows the steps mentioned below:

1. Open your file in gedit which you wish to convert, whatever format it may be in.

2. Copy all the contents of the file and paste in a new gedit document.

3. Now, save the file. In the save dialog thus opened select the character encoding as SHIFT_JIS before saving your file, attached is the screenshot below for this: Change the line ending if you want to. If you do not see the SHIFT_JIS in the select options, then click on the Add or Remove button which is present just below it.

4. In the dialog thus opened, select the SHIFT_JIS from the available encodings in the left column and then click on the Add button. Once added to the encoding menu, select it and save it.