in reply to encoding of file names

Perl treats file names as opaque strings of bytes*. In unix, they are usually characters encoded using the current locale, which in turn, is usually UTF-8.

You need to decode the file names, and you'll be all set.

* — This presents a problem on Windows which stores them as characters, but that's not relevant here.

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Re^2: encoding of file names
by amir_e_a (Hermit) on Mar 25, 2010 at 20:53 UTC

    Can you please tell me how to decode them? I am not quite experienced with Encode. I still don't understand what to specify as the from encoding.

    And since you mention it, i actually am curious about Windows, because i plan to make this program portable and i already had similar problems on Windows in the past.

[reply]

      I still don't understand what to specify as the from encoding.

      Usually, the file names are text encoded as per the local's encoding. In fact, I dare say that's the expectation.

      Most users have a UTF-8 locale. You could assume UTF-8, and worry about it when someone complains.

      If you want to actually get the right encoding, your best bet is probably the following undocumented function: 

      require encoding;  # Or "use encoding ();" with the parens.
my $locale_encoding = encoding::_get_locale_encoding();

      [download]

      This is what core module open uses.

      And since you mention it, i actually am curious about Windows

      It's a real mess. Bad support by builtins and by modules for accessing Windows's wide character interface. Bad support at finding the code page (last time I checked) of the single-byte interface (even though it's easier than locales in unix). Maybe some other time.

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