i was using Iconv library on Ruby to convert encoding from UTF-8 to UTF-32, UTF-16 etc and it was quite good.
However, I do see an issue when converting from Big5 to UTF-8 -- an exception is thrown for invalid sequence...
and the problem goes away when it is converting from CP950 to UTF-8, of which CP950 is essentially Big5...
so I wonder if there is another good alternative besides using Iconv? Or is the CP950 a better version of Big5?
Although Big5 and CP950 are almost the same there are differences. On the Unicode website there are reference files for converting different encodings to Unicode, you will see that Big5 and CP950 are different. My experience of Iconv has been good - I suspect its behavior may be correct.
Some of the characters found in CP950 but not Big5 have the hex values: 0x00, 0x01, 0x02, 0x03, 0x04, 0x05, 0x06, 0x07, 0x08, 0x09, 0x0A, 0x0B, 0x0C, 0x0D, 0x0E, 0x0F, 0x10, 0x11, 0x12, 0x13, 0x14, 0x15, 0x16, 0x17, 0x18, 0x19, 0x1A, 0x1B, 0x1C, 0x1D, 0x1E, 0x1F, 0x20, 0x21, 0x22, 0x23, 0x24, 0x25, 0x26, 0x27, 0x28, 0x29, 0x2A, 0x2B, 0x2C, 0x2D, 0x2E, 0x2F, 0x30, 0x31, 0x32, 0x33, 0x34, 0x35, 0x36, 0x37, 0x38, 0x39, 0x3A, 0x3B, 0x3C, 0x3D, 0x3E, 0x3F, 0x40, 0x41, 0x42, 0x43, 0x44, 0x45, 0x46, 0x47, 0x48, 0x49, 0x4A, 0x4B, 0x4C, 0x4D, 0x4E, 0x4F, 0x50, 0x51, 0x52, 0x53, 0x54, 0x55, 0x56, 0x57, 0x58, 0x59, 0x5A, 0x5B, 0x5C, 0x5D, 0x5E, 0x5F, 0x60, 0x61, 0x62, 0x63, 0x64, 0x65, 0x66, 0x67, 0x68, 0x69, 0x6A, 0x6B, 0x6C, 0x6D, 0x6E, 0x6F, 0x70, 0x71, 0x72, 0x73, 0x74, 0x75, 0x76, 0x77, 0x78, 0x79, 0x7A, 0x7B, 0x7C, 0x7D, 0x7E, 0x7F, 0x80, 0x81, 0x82, 0x83, 0x84, 0x85, 0x86, 0x87, 0x88, 0x89, 0x8A, 0x8B, 0x8C, 0x8D, 0x8E, 0x8F, 0x90, 0x91, 0x92, 0x93, 0x94, 0x95, 0x96, 0x97, 0x98, 0x99, 0x9A, 0x9B, 0x9C, 0x9D, 0x9E, 0x9F, 0xA0, 0xA1, 0xA15A, 0xA1C3, 0xA1C5, 0xA1FE, 0xA240, 0xA3E1, 0xA2CC, 0xA2CE. If any of your input contains these values, then the file is not valid Big5.
There are many many big5 variants. CP950 is just one of them. http://www.moztw.org/docs/big5/
For big5, I would suggest use "big5-2003", which is official updated version.
Have a look at ICU, it's a library that does character conversions among other things.
On the other hand, the other answers suggest you might need to examine your encodings more carefully.