How To Handle Special Characters in Cygwin, E.G., Trademark Symbol, n with the tilde above it

[Erwin Waterlander]

Op 11-10-2011 17:44, Leon Vanderploeg schreef:
> Greetings,
>
> I have recently encountered a problem with accessing files that have special
> characters in the file names.  The special characters include (a couple
> examples) the trademark symbol and the n with a tilde above it.  The
> recommendation from "
> http://www.cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using-specialnames.html" is:
> =============================
> Filenames with unusual (foreign) characters
> Windows filesystems use Unicode encoded as UTF-16 to store filename
> information. If you don't use the UTF-8 character set (see the section
> called "Internationalization") then there's a chance that a filename is
> using one or more characters which have no representation in the character
> set you're using.
> 	Note
>
> 	In the default "C" locale, Cygwin creates filenames using the UTF-8
> charset. This will always result in some
> 	 valid filename by default, but again might impose problems when
> switching to a non-"C" or non-"UTF-8" charset.
>
> 	Note
>
> 	To avoid this scenario altogether, always use UTF-8 as the character
> set.
> =============================
>
> Suggestions on how to access these files?
>
>

What problems do you get? As long as you stick to UTF-8 character 
encoding there should be no problems. The language doesn't need to be C.
I use locale nl_NL.UTF-8 without problems. In case your program uses 
gettext/libintl set the LANG environment variable explicitly to 
something.UTF-8. Otherwise a bug in libintl may cause that your program 
doesn't see the UTF-8 locale encoding. Use mintty instead of the default 
console for correct display.

Erwin

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