How can I determine the storing standards, such as UTF-8, for files?

Question

The question arises from the reply.

How can I change the storing from an ISO-standard to UTF-8?

Some details:

I used Mac with some ISO-standard. I formatted it, so I cannot know the exact ISO-standard. Now, I use Ubuntu, and I try to switch my Mac-latex-files from the ISO to UTF-8.

Answer 1

To answer the question in the title: The file command may be able to guess the encoding of a given file.

To answer the question in the body: Try iconv.