On Tue, 06 Jul 2004 00:17:39 +0300, Valtteri Vuorikoski
<vuori@puuhamaa.magenta.net> wrote:
> NetBSD's iconv(3) will replace the sequence with '?'.
> 
> Quoth IEEE Std 1003.1-2004:
> 
>  If a sequence of input bytes does not form a valid character in the
>  specified codeset, conversion shall stop after the previous
>  successfully converted character.

The reason it must stop is that mangling the data is not always helpful. 
Whether or not a '?' is any use depends on the application.  It's fine,
say, for web browser failures, and totally unacceptable for database
uploads.  

--jkl