Sample code for 30+ languages & platforms
PureBasic Requires Chilkat v11.0.0+

Convert utf-8 Text File to Windows-1252

Demonstrates how to convert a text file using the utf-8 byte representation to windows-1252.

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PureBasic
IncludeFile "CkBinData.pb"

Procedure ChilkatExample()

    success.i = 0

    ;  Converts a file containing the following to windows-1252:

    ;  <greetings>
    ;      <message>Hello, world!</message>
    ;      <message>¡Hola, mundo!</message>
    ;      <message>Bonjour, le monde!</message>
    ;      <message>Hallo, Welt!</message>
    ;      <message>Olá, mundo!</message>
    ;      <message>Привет, мир!</message>
    ;      <message>你好,世界!</message>
    ;      <message>こんにちは、世界!</message>
    ;      <message>안녕하세요, 세계!</message>
    ;      <message>😊🌍</message>
    ;  </greetings>

    ;  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    ;  Note:
    ;  Windows-1252 is an 8-bit single-byte encoding. It can only encode:
    ;  
    ;      The basic ASCII set (0x00–0x7F).
    ;      Latin-1 Supplement (0xA0–0xFF), plus some extra printable characters (like curly quotes, €, etc.).
    ;      In total: 256 possible code points, covering most Western European languages but nothing outside of Latin script.

    ;  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    ;  Characters in your XML that are representable
    ;  
    ;      Hello, world! ✅ (ASCII only)
    ;      ¡Hola, mundo! ✅ (inverted exclamation mark U+00A1 is in Windows-1252)
    ;      Bonjour, le monde! ✅
    ;      Hallo, Welt! ✅
    ;      Olá, mundo! ✅ (U+00E1 á and U+00F3 ó are in Windows-1252)

    ;  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    ;  Characters that break conversion
    ;  
    ;      Russian / Cyrillic: Привет, мир!
    ;      → These are Cyrillic characters (U+041F … U+0440). Not representable in Windows-1252. Conversion would require replacement (e.g. with ? or XML character references).
    ;      Chinese: 你好,世界!
    ;      → CJK ideographs (U+4F60, U+597D, etc.). Not in Windows-1252.
    ;      Japanese: こんにちは、世界!
    ;      → Hiragana + CJK. Not in Windows-1252.
    ;      Korean: 안녕하세요, 세계!
    ;      → Hangul syllables. Not in Windows-1252.
    ;      Emoji: 😊🌍
    ;      → Unicode Supplementary Multilingual Plane (U+1F60A, U+1F30D). Windows-1252 cannot encode any emoji.

    bd.i = CkBinData::ckCreate()
    If bd.i = 0
        Debug "Failed to create object."
        ProcedureReturn
    EndIf

    ;  Load the utf-8 bytes.
    success = CkBinData::ckLoadFile(bd,"qa_data/xml/utf8test.xml")
    If success = 0
        Debug CkBinData::ckLastErrorText(bd)
        CkBinData::ckDispose(bd)
        ProcedureReturn
    EndIf

    ;  If allOrNone = 1, then the conversion fails and the contents of the BinData
    ;  are left unchanged if any char is unconvertable.

    ;  If allOrNone = 0, then non-convertable chars are discarded.
    allOrNone.i = 0
    fromCharset.s = "utf-8"
    toCharset.s = "windows-1252"
    success = CkBinData::ckCharsetConvert(bd,fromCharset,toCharset,allOrNone)

    ;  The return value will be 0 if any utf-8 chars were discarded because of non-convertability.
    If success = 0
        Debug "Some utf-8 chars could not be converted to windows-1252"
    Else
        Debug "All utf-8 chars were converted to windows-1252"
    EndIf

    success = CkBinData::ckWriteFile(bd,"c:/temp/qa_output/out.xml")

    ;  The output file contains the following, where all non-convertable chars were discarded

    ;  <greetings>
    ;      <message>Hello, world!</message>
    ;      <message>¡Hola, mundo!</message>
    ;      <message>Bonjour, le monde!</message>
    ;      <message>Hallo, Welt!</message>
    ;      <message>Olá, mundo!</message>
    ;      <message>, !</message>
    ;      <message></message>
    ;      <message></message>
    ;      <message>, !</message>
    ;      <message></message>
    ;  </greetings>


    CkBinData::ckDispose(bd)


    ProcedureReturn
EndProcedure