golang, convert UTF-16 to UTF-8 string

gistfile1.go

package main

// http://play.golang.org/p/fVf7duRtdH

import "fmt"
import "unicode/utf16"
import "unicode/utf8"
import "bytes"

func main() {

	b := []byte{
		0xff, // BOM
		0xfe, // BOM
		'T',
		0x00,
		'E',
		0x00,
		'S',
		0x00,
		'T',
		0x00,
		0x6C,
		0x34,
		'\n',
		0x00,
	}

	s, err := DecodeUTF16(b)
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	fmt.Println(s)
}

func DecodeUTF16(b []byte) (string, error) {

	if len(b)%2 != 0 {
		return "", fmt.Errorf("Must have even length byte slice")
	}

	u16s := make([]uint16, 1)

	ret := &bytes.Buffer{}

	b8buf := make([]byte, 4)

	lb := len(b)
	for i := 0; i < lb; i += 2 {
		u16s[0] = uint16(b[i]) + (uint16(b[i+1]) << 8)
		r := utf16.Decode(u16s)
		n := utf8.EncodeRune(b8buf, r[0])
		ret.Write(b8buf[:n])
	}

	return ret.String(), nil
}

This helped me to decode UTF-16LE to UTF-8: https://blog.fearcat.in/a?ID=00001-1bd90844-ce0c-4fac-9b8f-fe3d8a30451d

decoder := unicode.UTF16(unicode.LittleEndian, unicode.IgnoreBOM).NewDecoder()
utf8bytes, err := decoder.Bytes(data) // data contains UTF16LE as read from a file