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2026-02-18

 Banishing SmartQuotes from Allegedly "plaintext" Files


I don't consider a text file to be "plain text" if it's UTF-8 with those accursed "smart quotes". To get rid of them, use the iconv utility. Example:


iconv -f utf-8 -t ascii//translit <file>


Maybe not worth a full post, but it took me a while to find the answer online, so there it is.


-R.