Working with encodings

If there is a chance that your program will have to work with data produced by disparate systems, you should be aware of different text encodings. This is a huge topic, but this section should provide some pointers to scratch the surface.

How to do it...

• Use the golang.org/x/text/encoding package to deal with different encodings.
• To find an encoding by name, use one of the following:
  • golang.org/x/text/encoding/ianaindex
  • golang.org/x/text/encoding/htmlindex
• Once you have an encoding, use it to translate text to and from UTF-8.

How it works...

Use one of the indexes to find an encoding. Then, use that encoding to read/write data:

package main
import (
     "fmt"
     "os"
     "golang.org/x/text/encoding/ianaindex"
)
func main() {
     enc, err := ianaindex.MIME.Encoding("US-ASCII")
  ...