: '''encoding convertto''' ?''encoding''? ''string''
Convert ''string'' from Unicode to the specified ''encoding''.
The result is a sequence of bytes (i.e., a byte array) that represents the converted string.
Each byte is stored in the lower 8-bits of a Unicode character.
If ''encoding'' is not specified, the current [encoding system%|%system encoding] is used.
<<discussion>>(
[ZB] ...and what then? How to convert such "byte array" into "ordinary string", which uses chosen ISO-encoding - can be [encoding system] - and which uses single-byte characters?)
<<br>>(
[DKF]: Depends what you want to do really, yes? It's useful with [binary format]'s `a` and `A` conversions, and you can communicate it externally over channels that are using the `iso8859-1` encoding. Or that you [chan configure%|%configure] to be `-translation binary` or `-encoding binary`. To be clear, “byte arrays” ''are strings'' where the characters are all from the range `U+000000`–`U+0000FF`; they also happen to have a more efficient internal representation, but that's not very important, a fact that you should ignore.)
[ZB] Is this a method (external communication over channels) used by msgcat-tools? No, I didn't analyse its code yet; I was just trying to use "convert" to perform conversions - according to its name - with no desired result.
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Example of an encoding with "non-null" 0 character: [GSM 03.38 encoding]
<<discussion>>
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**See also**
* [encoding]
* [encoding convertfrom]
* [encoding names]
* [encoding system]
<<categories>> Command | Tcl syntax help | Binary Data