From: "Iñaki Baz Castillo" <ibc@...>
Date: 2009-09-02T07:37:49+09:00
Subject: Ruby1.9: Encoding problems (how to use #force_encoding ?)

Hi, I'm using geo_location Ruby gem which returns to me a hash with the given 
IP geolocation.

I use Ruby1.9 and UTF-8 works fine, but in this case, when the "city" has 
"strange" symbols the the gem gives the string encoded in ASCII-8BIT.

For example:

    Alarc'n  (theorically it should be "Alarcón")

I need to send this string to a server which mandates UTF-8 usage so sending 
it as it's fails.

I've tryed to convert the encoding but received an error:

  result.encode "UTF-8"
   => `encode': "\xF3" from ASCII-8BIT to UTF-8
      (Encoding::UndefinedConversionError)

I've also tryed with force_encoding:
  result.force_encoding "UTF-8"

and then, the "result" string is converted to UTF-8 (I've checked 
result.encoding) but it's also not valid for the server and when printing it I 
see the same as before.


I need all of this just for a simple demo, so it owuld be valid for me just to 
delete the non valid UTF-8 chars from the result string, but I don't know 
how to do it.

Any help please?
-- 
Iñaki Baz Castillo <ibc@aliax.net>