Solved Asian Characters/Symbols in File Names

T

tmpdmp

So I have some files with Asian (Japanese or Korean) characters that I want to copy over to FreeBSD but FreeBSD replaces all those characters with just ".". Do I have to install something for Asian character support?
 
freebsd_noob said:
have you seen this https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/using-localization.html ?
Click to expand...
While I love the handbook, that might not be the best reference here. For example, the string "utf" is nowhere to be found on that page, and (though I can't confirm as I'm a native en_US user) I think it's more about setting your keyboard layout and default decoding for non-UTF strings.

Anyway, assuming you're using a terminal & ls, I'd set your system-wide settings to use UTF-8. There's a guide here on how to do so correctly while still setting the appropriate value for LC_COLLATE. This is one of the first few things I always do when setting up a new FreeBSD install.
 
This may be a file system problem. What are you copying from? If it is a Windows-type file system, are you aware of the --locale and -L options on the various FAT- and NTFS-style mount commands? If it is a Unix-type file system, on what locale were the file names written?

Also, when you say "FreeBSD replaces these characters with just dot", are you sure that this is binary replacement (the string returned from the readdir() system call contains character 0x2E = "." In the place you expect), or is it a rendering problem of whatever terminal you use? Can you read the file names (for example with a small perl or python script or C program) and dump them in hex? Here is an idea: "LANG=C ls -1 > /tmp/foo", followed by "hexdump -C /tmp/foo". You will see the binary representation of the file names, which allows you to debug what's really going on.
 
Sometimes it depends upon what form of conversion they're using. Some Windows user still use Shft-JIS (For Japanese, I don't know about Korean). Are you viewing this in X or console. If X, you may want to install Japanese and Korean fonts.
 
I was copying from a data DVD to my hard drive. I thought the Asian characters were preserved when burned to the disk but I may be wrong on that. I followed `Orum's link/guide to using UTF-8 and I can now see Asian characters in my web browser and in PCManFM (browsing files). I think burning the data DVD stripped the Asian characters which is why I had issues. Everyone in this thread has been helpful, thanks. This is solved.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top