---
name: "xml2asc"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "html-xml-utils"
version: "8.8-1"
release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/xml2asc"
---

# xml2asc(1)

convert UTF-8 to &#nnn; entities

## NAME

xml2asc - convert UTF-8 to &#nnn; entities

## SYNOPSIS

**xml2asc**

## DESCRIPTION

Reads an UTF-8 encoded text from standard input and writes to standard output, converting all non-ASCII characters to &#nnn; entities, so that the result is ASCII-encoded.

One example use is to convert ISO-8859-1 to ASCII with &#nnn; entities, by first running **asc2xml** to convert ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8 and then pipe the result into **xml2asc** to convert to ASCII with &#nnn; entities for all accented characters.

To test if a file is correct UTF-8, ignore the output and test the exit code, e.g. in Bash:

```
xml2asc <myfile >/dev/null && echo "OK" || echo "Fail"
```

## DIAGNOSTICS

**xml2asc** returns with a non-zero exit code if the input was not UTF-8.

## SEE ALSO

[**asc2xml**(1)](/asc2xml/1.md), **UTF-8** (RFC 2279)

## BUGS

Doesn't distinguish mark-up from content, so if the input uses non-ASCII characters in XML element names, they will be output with numerical entities in them, which is not legal in XML.