[Haskell-beginners] hGetContents exception

[Daniel Fischer]

On Wednesday 14 September 2011, 14:50:12, Luca Ciciriello wrote:
> Hi All.
> I'm using the function hGetContents in order to read some text file. If
> one or more of these text file have a wrong UTF encoding, I get the
> error:
> 
> hGetContents: invalid argument (Illegal byte sequence)
> 
> My workaround is to open the wrong encoded file in emacs and create a
> copy of this file (cut and paste in a new buffer). After this operation
> the new file has a correct UTF encoding and hGetContents doesn't
> complain any more.

Wouldn't using iconv be more convenient?

> 
> Is there a better way to read (without complaining) such wrong file
> without an external action (emacs)?

If you know the encoding of the file, you can

hSetEncoding handle encoding

after you opened the file (if it's one of the known encodings).