première école
appears
première école
Looks like you originally had a
UTF-8 file
which has been interpreted as an 8 bit encoding (e.g. ISO-8859-15)
and entity-encoded.
ISO-8859-15
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_8859-15
ISO 8859-15 encodes what it refers to as "Latin alphabet no. 9". This character set is used throughout the Americas, Western Europe, Oceania, and much of Africa.
Each character is encoded as a single eight-bit code value.
See below for a list of encoding systems.
I say this because the sequence C3A9 looks like a pretty plausible UTF-8 encoding sequence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8#Description
The W3C recommends UTF-8 as the default encoding in XML and HTML.
You will need to first entity-decode it,
then you'll have a UTF-8 encoding again.
iconv
You could then use something like iconv to convert to an encoding of your choosing.iconv
http://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/libiconv/documentation/libiconv-1.13/iconv.1.html
The iconv program converts text from one encoding to another encoding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iconv
iconv : unix, mac OSX, linux
https://developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/iconv.1.html
iconv-lite-js
Convert character encodings in pure javascript:https://github.com/ashtuchkin/iconv-lite
example
To work through your example:- Ã © would be decoded as the byte sequence 0xC3A9
- 0xC3A9 = 11000011 10101001 in binary
octetFist octetSecond - the leading 110 in the first octet tells us this could be interpreted as a UTF-8 two byte sequence.
- second octet starts with 10, we're looking at something we can interpret as UTF-8.
- To do that, we take the last 5 bits of the first octet, and the last 6 bits of the second octet...
- So, interpreted as UTF-8 it's
00011101001
= E9
= é (LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE
http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/e9/index.htm)
You mention wanting to handle this with PHP, something like this might do it for you:
//to load from a file, use
//$file=file_get_contents("/path/to/filename.txt");
//example below uses a literal string to demonstrate technique...
$file="&Précédent is a French word";
$utf8=html_entity_decode($file);
$iso8859=utf8_decode($utf8);
//$utf8 contains "Précédent is a French word" in UTF-8
//$iso8859 contains "Précédent is a French word" in ISO-8859
Ref.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4177783/xc3-xa9-and-other-codes
run OSX Mac (php is installed)
1/ create this text file (a php script: decode/recode)<?php
echo "decode-recode*";
$file="&Précédent is a French word";
$utf8a=html_entity_decode($file);
$iso8859a=utf8_decode($utf8a);
echo $utf8a, "//";
echo $iso8859a, "//";
?>
2/save as "decode1.hph"
3/use the application "terminal" :
php /path/YYY/decode1.php
4/you will get:
decode-recode*&Précédent is a French word//&Précédent is a French word//
list of encoding systems
in terminal >>iconv --list gives
ANSI_X3.4-1968 ANSI_X3.4-1986 ASCII CP367 IBM367 ISO-IR-6 ISO646-US ISO_646.IRV:1991 US US-ASCII CSASCII
UTF-8 UTF8
UTF-8-MAC UTF8-MAC
ISO-10646-UCS-2 UCS-2 CSUNICODE
UCS-2BE UNICODE-1-1 UNICODEBIG CSUNICODE11
UCS-2LE UNICODELITTLE
ISO-10646-UCS-4 UCS-4 CSUCS4
UCS-4BE
UCS-4LE
UTF-16
UTF-16BE
UTF-16LE
UTF-32
UTF-32BE
UTF-32LE
UNICODE-1-1-UTF-7 UTF-7 CSUNICODE11UTF7
UCS-2-INTERNAL
UCS-2-SWAPPED
UCS-4-INTERNAL
UCS-4-SWAPPED
C99
JAVA
CP819 IBM819 ISO-8859-1 ISO-IR-100 ISO8859-1 ISO_8859-1 ISO_8859-1:1987 L1 LATIN1 CSISOLATIN1
ISO-8859-2 ISO-IR-101 ISO8859-2 ISO_8859-2 ISO_8859-2:1987 L2 LATIN2 CSISOLATIN2
ISO-8859-3 ISO-IR-109 ISO8859-3 ISO_8859-3 ISO_8859-3:1988 L3 LATIN3 CSISOLATIN3
ISO-8859-4 ISO-IR-110 ISO8859-4 ISO_8859-4 ISO_8859-4:1988 L4 LATIN4 CSISOLATIN4
CYRILLIC ISO-8859-5 ISO-IR-144 ISO8859-5 ISO_8859-5 ISO_8859-5:1988 CSISOLATINCYRILLIC
ARABIC ASMO-708 ECMA-114 ISO-8859-6 ISO-IR-127 ISO8859-6 ISO_8859-6 ISO_8859-6:1987 CSISOLATINARABIC
ECMA-118 ELOT_928 GREEK GREEK8 ISO-8859-7 ISO-IR-126 ISO8859-7 ISO_8859-7 ISO_8859-7:1987 ISO_8859-7:2003 CSISOLATINGREEK
HEBREW ISO-8859-8 ISO-IR-138 ISO8859-8 ISO_8859-8 ISO_8859-8:1988 CSISOLATINHEBREW
ISO-8859-9 ISO-IR-148 ISO8859-9 ISO_8859-9 ISO_8859-9:1989 L5 LATIN5 CSISOLATIN5
ISO-8859-10 ISO-IR-157 ISO8859-10 ISO_8859-10 ISO_8859-10:1992 L6 LATIN6 CSISOLATIN6
ISO-8859-11 ISO8859-11 ISO_8859-11
ISO-8859-13 ISO-IR-179 ISO8859-13 ISO_8859-13 L7 LATIN7
ISO-8859-14 ISO-CELTIC ISO-IR-199 ISO8859-14 ISO_8859-14 ISO_8859-14:1998 L8 LATIN8
ISO-8859-15 ISO-IR-203 ISO8859-15 ISO_8859-15 ISO_8859-15:1998 LATIN-9
ISO-8859-16 ISO-IR-226 ISO8859-16 ISO_8859-16 ISO_8859-16:2001 L10 LATIN10
KOI8-R CSKOI8R
KOI8-U
KOI8-RU
CP1250 MS-EE WINDOWS-1250
CP1251 MS-CYRL WINDOWS-1251
CP1252 MS-ANSI WINDOWS-1252
CP1253 MS-GREEK WINDOWS-1253
CP1254 MS-TURK WINDOWS-1254
CP1255 MS-HEBR WINDOWS-1255
CP1256 MS-ARAB WINDOWS-1256
CP1257 WINBALTRIM WINDOWS-1257
CP1258 WINDOWS-1258
850 CP850 IBM850 CSPC850MULTILINGUAL
862 CP862 IBM862 CSPC862LATINHEBREW
866 CP866 IBM866 CSIBM866
MAC MACINTOSH MACROMAN CSMACINTOSH
MACCENTRALEUROPE
MACICELAND
MACCROATIAN
MACROMANIA
MACCYRILLIC
MACUKRAINE
MACGREEK
MACTURKISH
MACHEBREW
MACARABIC
MACTHAI
HP-ROMAN8 R8 ROMAN8 CSHPROMAN8
NEXTSTEP
ARMSCII-8
GEORGIAN-ACADEMY
GEORGIAN-PS
KOI8-T
CP154 CYRILLIC-ASIAN PT154 PTCP154 CSPTCP154
MULELAO-1
CP1133 IBM-CP1133
ISO-IR-166 TIS-620 TIS620 TIS620-0 TIS620.2529-1 TIS620.2533-0 TIS620.2533-1
CP874 WINDOWS-874
VISCII VISCII1.1-1 CSVISCII
TCVN TCVN-5712 TCVN5712-1 TCVN5712-1:1993
ISO-IR-14 ISO646-JP JIS_C6220-1969-RO JP CSISO14JISC6220RO
JISX0201-1976 JIS_X0201 X0201 CSHALFWIDTHKATAKANA
ISO-IR-87 JIS0208 JIS_C6226-1983 JIS_X0208 JIS_X0208-1983 JIS_X0208-1990 X0208 CSISO87JISX0208
ISO-IR-159 JIS_X0212 JIS_X0212-1990 JIS_X0212.1990-0 X0212 CSISO159JISX02121990
CN GB_1988-80 ISO-IR-57 ISO646-CN CSISO57GB1988
CHINESE GB_2312-80 ISO-IR-58 CSISO58GB231280
CN-GB-ISOIR165 ISO-IR-165
ISO-IR-149 KOREAN KSC_5601 KS_C_5601-1987 KS_C_5601-1989 CSKSC56011987
EUC-JP EUCJP EXTENDED_UNIX_CODE_PACKED_FORMAT_FOR_JAPANESE CSEUCPKDFMTJAPANESE
MS_KANJI SHIFT-JIS SHIFT_JIS SJIS CSSHIFTJIS
CP932
ISO-2022-JP CSISO2022JP
ISO-2022-JP-1
ISO-2022-JP-2 CSISO2022JP2
CN-GB EUC-CN EUCCN GB2312 CSGB2312
GBK
CP936 MS936 WINDOWS-936
GB18030
ISO-2022-CN CSISO2022CN
ISO-2022-CN-EXT
HZ HZ-GB-2312
EUC-TW EUCTW CSEUCTW
BIG-5 BIG-FIVE BIG5 BIGFIVE CN-BIG5 CSBIG5
CP950
BIG5-HKSCS:1999
BIG5-HKSCS:2001
BIG5-HKSCS BIG5-HKSCS:2004 BIG5HKSCS
EUC-KR EUCKR CSEUCKR
CP949 UHC
CP1361 JOHAB
ISO-2022-KR CSISO2022KR
CP856
CP922
CP943
CP1046
CP1124
CP1129
CP1161 IBM-1161 IBM1161 CSIBM1161
CP1162 IBM-1162 IBM1162 CSIBM1162
CP1163 IBM-1163 IBM1163 CSIBM1163
DEC-KANJI
DEC-HANYU
437 CP437 IBM437 CSPC8CODEPAGE437
CP737
CP775 IBM775 CSPC775BALTIC
852 CP852 IBM852 CSPCP852
CP853
855 CP855 IBM855 CSIBM855
857 CP857 IBM857 CSIBM857
CP858
860 CP860 IBM860 CSIBM860
861 CP-IS CP861 IBM861 CSIBM861
863 CP863 IBM863 CSIBM863
CP864 IBM864 CSIBM864
865 CP865 IBM865 CSIBM865
869 CP-GR CP869 IBM869 CSIBM869
CP1125
EUC-JISX0213
SHIFT_JISX0213
ISO-2022-JP-3
BIG5-2003
ISO-IR-230 TDS565
ATARI ATARIST
RISCOS-LATIN1
Example
converts input from the old West-European encoding ISO-8859-9 to Unicode UTF-8For example, use the application "terminal" :
iconv -f ISO8859-9 -t UTF-8 NameFile
and the inverse
iconv -f UTF-8 -t ISO8859-9
