I do not see any indication in the code that you are processing variables as Unicode. There are a series of articles written by Tom Christiansen about working with Unicode in Perl 5 that I suspect may prove useful to you in this case.

Hope that helps.

I don't see that any of the mention unicode filenames or win32 .... but I'm sure nothing there will help this situation

According to the DBD::SQLite documentation, the connect() syntax is (from the SYNOPSIS):

my $dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:SQLite:dbname=$dbfile","","");
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You appear the missing the dbname= part.

I'd suggest you use the utf8 pragma and hard-code the connect() call, with the unicode character(s), directly into your script (or, at least, a test version); e.g.

my $dbh = DBI->connect('dbi:SQLite:dbname=C:\folder-ü', ...);
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Remove all the Tk and SQL code: just attempt to connect to the database. Work on getting that happening. If you encounter difficulties, ask here but include all relevant details (see the "How do I post a question effectively?" guidelines if you're unsure about this step).

Once you have a script that allows you to successfully connect(), start adding the other parts back in a bit at a time.

Repeat the process outlined: fixing small problems as they occur or asking here when you can't. Eventually, you'll have everything fixed — and may still retain much of your original hair :-)

I would first check without GetANSIPathName...

https://metacpan.org/source/ISHIGAKI/DBD-SQLite-1.40/lib/DBD/SQLite.pm

    # To avoid unicode and long file name problems on Windows,
    # convert to the shortname if the file (or parent directory) exist
+s.
    if ( $^O =~ /MSWin32/ and $real ne ':memory:' and $real ne '') {
        require Win32;
        require File::Basename;
        my ($file, $dir, $suffix) = File::Basename::fileparse($real);
        my $short = Win32::GetShortPathName($real);
        if ( $short && -f $short ) {
            # Existing files will work directly.
            $real = $short;
        } elsif ( -d $dir ) {
            # We are creating a new file.
            # Does the directory it's in at least exist?
            $real = join '', grep { defined } Win32::GetShortPathName(
+$dir), $file, $suffix;
        } else {
            # SQLite can't do mkpath anyway.
            # So let it go through as it and fail.
        }
    }
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Although according to https://metacpan.org/source/ISHIGAKI/DBD-SQLite-1.40/sqlite3.c unicode filenames should work

#if SQLITE_OS_WINCE || SQLITE_OS_WINNT || SQLITE_OS_WINRT
#  define SQLITE_WIN32_HAS_WIDE
#endif
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but there doesn't appear to be a test in the (perl) test suite

So maybe your version is too old, you're getting 8.3 filename interference, maybe your copy of DBD::SQLite was compiled without SQLITE_WIN32_HAS_WIDE or or something else entirely :)

These things (above) are the things I would check

I would also read read Win32::Unicode and Win32::Unicode::Native and Re: dos path accents and read Re^5: threads::shared seems to kill performance (Workaround). and beware of :memory: and Windows Alternate Data Streams

Are there any error messages you can provide? What are the contents of $shortpath? Is the content from getOpenFile processed correctly from unicode to perl-internal? Just some areas to look at.

Hi MidLife

Error: DBI connect('C:/incriminated path with strange characters/DATABASE.db','',...) failed: unable to open database at mymodule.pm line xy

$shortpath was just a way to try to have a path working. Just skip that one and use $file

" Is the content from getOpenFile processed correctly from unicode to perl-internal" this I really do not know, sorry

I created a SQLite database in C:\folder-ü and ran your sample program and it opened the database successfully. I tried another directory with other non-ASCII characters in the name and had no trouble opening a database in that directory either. This with 64bit Strawberry Perl 5.16.2 on 64bit Windows 7 Professional.

What version of perl are you running and what is your operating system?

Hello, I'm running ActiveState 5.16

Here is the simple code I'm working on right now with some (maybe) useful error messages. The database is in a folder containing a "ü" in its name...

use strict;
use warnings;
use UTF8;
use Tk;
use DBD::SQLite;
use Data::Dumper;
$Data::Dumper::Useqq=1;


my $mw = new MainWindow;
my $types = [ ['Text', '.db'], ['All Files',   '*'],];
my $file_1= $mw->getOpenFile(-filetypes => $types);

#just looking at how the path is
print Dumper($file_1);    

#connecting to sqlite
my $dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:SQLite:$file_1", "", "", { RaiseError => 1
+, AutoCommit => 1, PrintError => 0 });
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... connection error

What file system are you using there? NTFS or one of the FAT versions? (I know about PHP having issues with NTFS and non-ASCII characters)

And, perhaps you could diagnose what readdir returns as name of the concerned folder...

...because or 1) I'm a total idiot or 2) perl makes things difficult when it cames to unicode.

I have not seen any indication that hypothesis 1 should be taken seriously, but Unicode is really a complicated matter. And, as far as I can say, Perl is probably the language that makes Unicode as simple as it can be. But you need to understand a number of things before mastering the subject, and that makes it quite complex (and I certainly don't master the subject as far as I am concerned).

I had the same problem in Japanese but I can solve it.

First of all, what is the character code of $file? If you can get that string correctly in Perl internal encoding, then you should covert it to (non-flagged) utf8 before pass to DBI->connect function.