YAZ-ICONV(1)

✨ NAME ✨

yaz-iconv — YAZ Character set conversion utility, and bestie, it's about to be your whole personality 💅

She lives in the YAZ-ICONV(1) part of your manual pages, she's been doing this since forever, and honestly? iconic.

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

yaz-iconv [-f from] [-t to] [-v] [file...]

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

okay so here's the vibe. yaz-iconv takes data that's sitting in the character set you name with from, and converts it so it comes out in the character set you name with to. That's it. That's the whole glow-up. 🔥

This utility is lowkey similar to the iconv you'll find hanging out on so many POSIX systems (Glibc, Solaris, etc.). Same energy, YAZ flavour.

And if you don't hand her any file at all? No worries bestie, she just reads from standard input. 🫶

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -ffrom — specify the character set from of the input file. She should be used in conjunction with option -t, no cap. 💫
• -tto — specify the character set of of the output. She should be used in conjunction with option -f. (yes the original really says "of of", we're keeping it, it's giving ✨ lore ✨)
• -v — print more information about the conversion process. For the girlies who need the details. 🙈

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🦋 ENCODINGS 🦋

So the yaz-iconv command — and the API as defined in yaz/yaz-iconv.h — is a wrapper for the library system call iconv. But YAZ' iconv utility also implements conversions on its own. The table below lists character sets (or encodings) that are supported by YAZ. Each character set is marked with either encode or decode. If an encoding is encode-enabled, YAZ may convert to the designated encoding. If an encoding is decode-enabled, YAZ may convert from the designated encoding. (iykyk 💜)

• marc8 (encode, decode) — the MARC8[1] encoding as defined by the Library of Congress. Most MARC21/USMARC records use this encoding. absolutely carrying the whole library world on her back fr fr 📚
• marc8s (encode, decode) — like MARC8, but conversion prefers non-combined characters in the Latin-1 plane over combined characters. she's picky in a tasteful way 💅
• marc8lossy (encode) — lossy encoding of MARC-8.
• marc8lossless (encode) — lossless encoding of MARC8. the girl who keeps receipts 📝
• utf8 (encode, decode) — the most commonly used UNICODE encoding on the Internet. main character energy, obviously 👑
• iso8859-1 (encode, decode) — ISO-8859-1, AKA Latin-1.
• iso5426 (decode) — ISO 5426. Some MARC records (UNIMARC) use this encoding.
• iso5428:1984 (encode, decode) — ISO 5428:1984.
• advancegreek (encode, decode) — an encoding for Greek in use by some vendors (Advance). Greek girlies rise 🇬🇷✨
• danmarc (decode) — Danmarc (in danish)[2] is an encoding based on UNICODE which is used for DanMARC2 records.

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🍓 EXAMPLES 🍓

The following command converts from ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) to UTF-8. watch her work:

yaz-iconv -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8 <input.lst >output.lst

ate. no crumbs. 😭💖

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🌈 FILES 🌈

• prefix/bin/yaz-iconv
• prefix/include/yaz/yaz-iconv.h

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

yaz(7) iconv(1)

go read those too, they're the supportive besties in this friend group 🫶

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💜 AUTHORS 💜

Index Data

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⭐ NOTES ⭐

1. MARC8 https://loc.gov/marc/specifications/speccharmarc8.html
2. Danmarc (in danish) https://www.kat-format.dk/danMARC2/Danmarc2.4.htm

bestie please actually click these, they're not decorative 💀

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and that's the whole page!! 💖 this one's from YAZ 5.38.1, dated 10/16/2026, and it's YAZ-ICONV(1) forever and always. slay, stay converted, bye bestie 🦋✨🎀