From: ser@... (Sean Russell)
Date: 2004-05-03T21:24:00+09:00
Subject: Re: how can I add the iconv extension to Ruby?

"Martin Elzen" <martinelzen@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<Sea2-F10nccYTjr8cU600003342@hotmail.com>...
> I want to be able to convert UTF-16 strings to UTF-8.  From a usenet post I 
> understand that the standard 'iconv' ext for Ruby can do that.  That same 
> post explained that you have to:

This won't solve your iconv problems, but if all you want to do is
convert UTF-16 to UTF-8, a quick and dirty solution is:

    def u16_to_u8(str)
      array_enc=str.unpack('C*')
      array_utf8 = []
      2.step(array_enc.size-1, 2){|i|
        array_utf8 << (array_enc.at(i+1) + array_enc.at(i)*0x100)
      }
      array_utf8.pack('U*')
    end

--- SER