Accessing Files whose Names are With an unknown Encoding

Question

When walking the file tree of a linux machine (perhaps also other Unix), I can encounter files or dirs names who are encoded with different encodings than the one returned by Java's default charset (Charset.defaultCharset()). This is due to the fact that a user can change he's locale and write a file or dir who's name is encoded with the user's custom locale.

I want to walk the entire file system, (for example using Files.walkFileTree) and for each file/dir encountered always be able to store something so that I can later create a new Path object successfully to that file/dir.

However if I encounter a file/dir whose name is encoded with an unknown encoding I am unable to access that file again.

To demonstrate the problem, on a RHEL6 machine I have a dir under "/home/languages" whose name is encoded with encoding he_IL.iso88598 and the locale of the system is also he_IL.iso88598 The following code decodes the name once as it should using the platform's default encoding and once as UTF-8:

Path source = Paths.get("/home/languages");

Files.walkFileTree(source, new SimpleFileVisitor<Path>() {

@Override
public FileVisitResult preVisitDirectory(Path dir,
        BasicFileAttributes attrs) throws IOException {

    String badName = new String(dir.toString().getBytes("UTF8"));
    String name = dir.toString();
    Files.exists(Paths.get(name));                  
    Files.exists(Paths.get(badName))
    return FileVisitResult.CONTINUE;
}

});

The following exception is thrown:

Exception in thread "main" java.nio.file.InvalidPathException: Malformed input or input contains unmappable chacraters: /home/languages/?¢??¨??×

Java is able to access files/dirs even if their encoding is unknown once during the walkFileTree so why can't I access those paths again?

Thanks

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:30

0

see this discussion: How can I open files containing accents in Java?

and this: How to fix java when if refused to open a file with special charater in filename?

old bug known in File library

advice to use java.nio.file package (Files and Paths)

edited May 23 '17 at 12:30

Community

1
1

answered Dec 02 '15 at 12:07

guillaume girod-vitouchkina

3,061
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Thanks for the reply @guillaume, however I don't think I am using File or any other java.io library. I updated the question to be more specific. – Or Bar Yaacov Dec 03 '15 at 08:26

Accessing Files whose Names are With an unknown Encoding

1 Answers1