how to mass convert .xml files in a directory to UTF-8 while retaining the same filename

Question

I have many .xml files that are encoded in ISO-8859-1, and I want them all in UTF-8.

I figured out the code to convert them individually which is :

iconv -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8 filename.xml > newfilename.xml

and it works fine.

What I want to know is how to write a shell script to automatically clean up all the .xml files in a directory and then replace the old files with the new converted files, but still keeping the same file-name.

I'm new to shell scripting, so help will be much appreciated.

Answer 1

you can do this on the command line in a bash shell

for i in *.xml; do
    iconv -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8 "$i" > "$i.1" && mv "$i.1" "$i"
done

this basically takes all xml file, puts them through Iconv to filname.xml.1 and then moves that file back to the original file name

had a quick look at iconv and heres what i thing it should be (if you are using the GNU version)

for i in *.xml; do
    iconv -sc -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8 "$i" > "$i.1" && mv "$i.1" "$i"
done

the -s option silences warnings, and -c option omits invalid characters from output.