This is the mail archive of the cygwin mailing list for the Cygwin project.


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]
Other format: [Raw text]

Re: filesystem encoding


On Wed, 8 Sep 2004, Colin JN Breame wrote:

> Hello,
> Could anyone direct me to some documentation about how cygwin decodes
> filenames (e.g. with ls)

Cygwin is not Unicode-aware (<http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#PTC>).
Basically, it uses the Win32 API methods that make the underlying
filesystem map from Unicode names to an 8-bit charset (set by your
"Regional Settings").  Any names that can't be so mapped are rejected as
invalid, and are displayed with '?'s by "ls".  Switching to the correct
language allows accessing those names.  See MSDN for more info.

Sometimes, the terminal treats some characters in the charset as control
characters, and doesn't display them proprely.  Programs need to be told
not to do anything special with them, e.g., I have the following aliases:

alias ls='ls -F --color=tty --show-control-chars'
alias less='less -SR'

(note the "--show-control-chars" option to "ls" and the "-R" option to
"less").

> ps. cygwin is cool

Yes, it is.  And getting cooler every day. :-D
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
      |\      _,,,---,,_		pechtcha@cs.nyu.edu
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor@watson.ibm.com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D.
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

"Happiness lies in being privileged to work hard for long hours in doing
whatever you think is worth doing."  -- Dr. Jubal Harshaw

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]