Convert a file encoding using R? (ANSI to UTF-8)

you can use iconv:

writeLines(iconv(readLines("tmp.html"), from = "ANSI_X3.4-1986", to = "UTF8"), "tmp2.html")

tmp2.html should be utf-8.

Edit by Henrik in June 2015:
A working solution for Windows distilled from the comments is as follows:

writeLines(iconv(readLines("tmp.html"), from = "ANSI_X3.4-1986", to = "UTF8"), 
           file("tmp2.html", encoding="UTF-8"))

Update 2021: And if ANSI is the current locale, the following works as well (i.e., uses the local encoding as from source):

writeLines(iconv(readLines("tmp.html"), from = "", to = "UTF8"), 
           file("tmp2.html", encoding="UTF-8"))

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