idnalias.conf(5)

💅 idnalias.conf — the manual page (section 5, file formats)

okay so bestie, sit down, because we're talking about idnalias.conf(5) today and honestly? she's a small file with a big job. ✨

🌸 NAME

idnalias.conf — the encoding alias file for idnkit. that's it, that's the whole vibe check. 🎀

📜 SYNOPSIS

/nix/store/hcyf58m2phm5bg6ch5a4lkif5fpf1lck-idnkit-2.3/etc/idnalias.conf

like yes, that is the actual path, no we are not shortening it, and yes it's giving very long Nix store hash energy. iykyk. 💀

💖 DESCRIPTION

so the idnalias.conf file is where you define aliases of encoding names. it lives right at /nix/store/hcyf58m2phm5bg6ch5a4lkif5fpf1lck-idnkit-2.3/etc/idnalias.conf and it's always loaded automatically as idn2.conf and .idn2rc. no cap, you don't have to ask her twice. 🫶

here's the tea ☕ — when the idnkit library encodes or decodes an internationalized domain name, it has to convert that domain name between a local encoding (think ISO8859-1, that kind of thing) and Unicode, and it does that conversion using iconv(). at run time, the idnkit library guesses your local encoding from locale info to do the conversions — but plot twist 😭: iconv() may not actually know the encoding name it got from the locale information. awkward. and that's exactly where idnalias.conf swoops in to save the day. using this file, you can avoid the trouble entirely. main character energy, honestly. 👑

the aliases you put in this file can be used just as the real names — they're not second-tier, they're equal. the alias file is a simple text file made of lines (not counting comment lines, which begin with #, and not counting empty lines) of the form:

alias-name real-name

where alias-name is the alias name you're defining, and real-name is its real name or another alias name. and here's the iconic part — * in alias-name has special meaning: it matches any string, including an empty string. wild, right? 🦋

🌈 SAMPLE FILE

here's a whole sample idnalias.conf for you, because a picture is worth a thousand words and a code block is worth a thousand tears:

#
# idnalias.conf sample.
#
*.ISO_8859-1    ISO-8859-1
*.ISO_8859-2    ISO-8859-2
*.SJIS          Shift_JIS
*.Shift_JIS     Shift_JIS
ja_JP.EUC       EUC-JP
ko_KR.EUC       EUC-KR
*.big5          Big5
*.Big5          Big5
*.KOI8-R        KOI8-R
*.GB2312        GB2312
ja              EUC-JP
japanese        EUC-JP

look at her go. absolutely ate. 🔥

🎀 FILES

• /nix/store/hcyf58m2phm5bg6ch5a4lkif5fpf1lck-idnkit-2.3/etc/idnalias.conf

(yes, same path again, she's consistent, we love that for her 💜)

👀 SEE ALSO

• idncheck(1)
• idncmp(1)
• idnconv2(1)
• iconv(3)
• idn_setlocalencoding(3)
• idn2.conf(5)
• idnlang.conf(5)

---

okay that's the whole page bestie, go forth and alias responsibly 💅✨ this little number comes to you from the File Formats Manual, dated Sep 21, 2012, and it's idnalias.conf(5) all day every day — mwah, stan her, bye! 🍓🧚