<b_jonas> slashlearn block device/Block devices are a concession made in Unix to make raw hard disks and magnetic tape have a similar interface to regular files and terminals. Since magnetic tapes can\'t write individual bytes, only entire blocks, the interface isn\'t exactly the same, thus the dreaded dd obs= option was born.

#!/bin/bash

enc=$(echo "$1" | iconv -t iso8859-1 | chardet | awk '{print $2}')
echo "$1" | iconv -t iso8859-1 | iconv -f "$enc"