Iconv and Kconv on Ruby (1.9.2)

I know that Iconv is used to convert strings' encoding. From my understandings Kconv is for the same purpose (am I wrong?).

My question is: what is the difference between them, and what should I use for encoding conversions.

btw found some info that Iconv will be deprecated from 1.9.3 versi开发者_运维百科on.

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As https://stackoverflow.com/users/23649/jtbandes says, it looks Kconv is like Iconv but specialized for Kanji ("the logographic Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji). Unless you are working on something specifically Japanese, I'm guessing you don't need Kconv.

If you're using Ruby 1.9, you can use the built-in encoding support most of the time instead of Iconv. I tried for hours to understand what I was doing until I read this:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html

Then you can start to use stuff like

String#encode           # Ruby 1.9
String#encode!          # Ruby 1.9
String#force_encoding   # Ruby 1.9

with confidence. If you have more complex needs, do read http://blog.grayproductions.net/categories/character_encodings

UPDATED Thanks to JohnZ in the comments

Iconv is still useful in Ruby 1.9 because it can transliterate characters (something that String#encode et al. can't do). Here's an example of how to extend String with a function that transliterates to UTF-8:

require 'iconv'
class ::String
  # Return a new String that has been transliterated into UTF-8
  # Should work in Ruby 1.8 and Ruby 1.9 thanks to http://po-ru.com/diary/fixing-invalid-utf-8-in-ruby-revisited/
  def as_utf8(from_encoding = 'UTF-8')
    ::Iconv.conv('UTF-8//TRANSLIT', from_encoding, self + ' ')[0..-2]
  end
end

"foo".as_utf8 #=> "foo"
"foo".as_utf8('ISO-8859-1') #=> "foo"

Thanks JohnZ!