Convert UCS-2 encoded text with 16-bit characters into 8-bit characters of the current Ansi codepage of your Windows system, on the command line with the free Open Source tool Swiss File Knife.
sfk wtoa in.txtsfk iwtoa
convert UCS-2 encoded text with 16-bit characters
into 8-bit characters of the current Ansi codepage
of your Windows system.
options
-nostop if some chars cannot be converted
then do not stop, show no warning,
set return code 1 instead of 9.
-tofile x write output to file x
-codes print character codes
-be big endian input
-le little endian input
-codepage=n change codepage. for details
type: sfk listcodes
command chaining support
iwtoa accepts binary input from
previous commands like xed.
aliasessfk ucstoansi same as wtoa
sfk iucstoansi same as iwtoa
return code
0 = ok, all characters converted.
if conversion is incomplete:
default: rc 9, chaining stops.
-nostop: rc 1.
see alsosfk sysinfo tell active codepages
sfk atow Ansi to wide chars
sfk wtou convert to UTF-8
sfk utow UTF-8 to wide chars
examplessfk wtoa in.txt
if in.txt contains wide character data
print this as Ansi text to terminal.
because characters must be converted to
a DOS codepage for terminal output
it is not sure that every accent or umlaut
character is printed as expected.
sfk wtoa in.txt -tofile out.txt
write output to out.txt, keeping the Ansi
encoding as is. text can then be viewed
and edited by a text editor like Notepad++.
sfk load in.txt +iwtoa +filter -+foo
get all lines containing "foo".