set_encoding

If single argument is specified, strings read from ARGF are tagged with the encoding specified.

If two encoding names separated by a colon are given, e.g. âascii:utf-8â, the read string is converted from the first encoding (external encoding) to the second encoding (internal encoding), then tagged with the second encoding.

If two arguments are specified, they must be encoding objects or encoding names. Again, the first specifies the external encoding; the second specifies the internal encoding.

If the external encoding and the internal encoding are specified, the optional Hash argument can be used to adjust the conversion process. The structure of this hash is explained in the +String#encode+ documentation.

For example:

ARGF.set_encoding('ascii')         # Tag the input as US-ASCII text
ARGF.set_encoding(Encoding::UTF_8) # Tag the input as UTF-8 text
ARGF.set_encoding('utf-8','ascii') # Transcode the input from US-ASCII
                                   # to UTF-8.