Ignore Encoding Issues when reading files in Ruby 1.9

In case you assume a file is encoded in X but are not sure and do not care if some characters cannot be converted and get lost, try

def slurp(file_name, assumed_encoding, target_encoding)
 file_mode = "rb:%s" % assumed_encoding
 File.read(file_name, :mode => file_mode).encode(
 target_encoding,
 :undef => :replace,
 :invalid => :replace,
 :replace => "?"
 ).force_encoding(target_encoding)
end

slurp(file_name = "presumably_utf8.txt",
 assumed_encoding="UTF-8",
 target_encoding="UTF-8")